Hostage drama at Discovery Channel ends

A man, upset with the Discovery Channel's environmental programming, who took several people hostage at the company's headquarters has been shot by police.

Police shot a gunman and safely freed the three people he had taken hostage Wednesday in a four-hour standoff at the Discovery Channel headquarters outside Washington, police said.

"Approximately 10 minutes ago the suspect was shot by police officers," Montgomery County police chief J. Thomas Manger told reporters, adding that the gunman's condition was unknown but that he was "in custody."

"All the hostages are safe and are out of the building," he said.

Police had feared for the lives of the hostages after more than two hours of authorities' telephone talks with the gunman, who was exhibiting "a wide range of emotions during our negotiations," Manger said.

The gunman, an Asian male, had "what we believe to be explosive devices strapped to his front and back," Manger said, adding that police heard a popping sound and the device "appeared to go off" but stressing that police were sweeping the building to assess the situation.

"There are other suspected devices in the building that have not been rendered safe and at this point we are -- the operation at this point is to make sure that those devices are rendered safe and removed," the police chief said.

He refused to say whether the assailant was dead, but hinted at the possible outcome by saying, when asked if the intruder had been sent to hospital, that "I don't believe we removed him from the building."

Manger acknowledged that the gunman "had some history with the folks at Discovery Channel and I believe in fact that he was arrested here a couple years ago."

Local news reports, citing law enforcement sources, identified the gunman as James Jay Lee, a man with a history of protest against the Discovery Channel.

Lee has gone so far as to post a list of demands including that the cable station "broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet."

In a rambling, profanity-laden manifesto posted on Lee's Savetheplanetprotest.com, he insisted that Discovery "stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants," cease promoting war and weapons of mass destruction through its technology programming, and promote an end to all immigration.