ITTSBURGH (AP) -- A
suicidal man who held a businessman hostage inside a downtown
Pittsburgh office building for more than five hours Friday, posting
Facebook updates during the standoff, surrendered to authorities without
incident, police said.
Klein Michael Thaxton,
22, surrendered just before 2 p.m., and the man he took hostage was
unhurt, Police Chief Nathan Harper said.
The
hostage-taking on the 16th floor of Three Gateway Center prompted an
evacuation while Thaxton wrote on Facebook that had "lost everything"
and that people didn't have to worry about him anymore.
His friends responded by urging him to end the situation peacefully, including one who asked him to think of his mother.
A
police spokeswoman identified the hostage as Charles Breitsman, owner
of CW Breitsman Associates. The firm runs employee-benefits programs,
but it wasn't immediately clear why he was targeted.
"(Thaxton)
is a sick young man and we do need to take measures to see he is taken
care of as well," police spokeswoman Diane Richard said.
Police
asked Facebook to take down Thaxton's page early in the afternoon in
hopes of steering all of his attention to negotiations.
The
Facebook exchanges had the potential to both help and harm the
negotiations, Harper said. It's helpful that Thaxton can see "that
people are concerned about his well-being," Harper said, but "it is a
distraction for negotiating."
A worker on the
16th floor described a woman running into her office yelling for someone
to call 911. Kathi Dvorak, an administrative assistant at AXA Advisors,
said a second woman ran in and said her office was being robbed.
Harper had described the hostage-taker as having a military background but didn't elaborate.
Thaxton has a criminal record that includes a guilty plea to robbery earlier this year and a minimum six-month jail sentence.
Joel
Kirchartz, a 28-year-old web developer who works on the 17th floor,
said he and his co-workers looked out the windows Friday morning and "a
bunch of cops pulled up with all sorts of sirens going; there must have
been 20 of them." He said he went downstairs to find out what was
happening and by the time he got outside, police had sealed the
building.
Another worker, Sarah Vereb, said
she was at her desk when she was ordered to leave the building shortly
after a friend called to report that she wasn't being allowed up from
the lobby.
Hundreds of workers walked down the stairwell. Vereb said the exodus was orderly and "very, very quiet."
A
phone message left for the building's Santa Monica, Calif.-based
ownership group was not immediately returned. The building complex
management office confirmed the evacuation and said it was working with
police.
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