PITTSBURGH —
An armed suicidal man held a businessman hostage inside a downtown office building for more than five hours Friday and posted Facebook updates about it before surrendering 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 he 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. “We don’t know if he’s related to this company. We don’t know what the tie-in is he has with this individual.”
She said Breitman was able to meet with his family afterward.
“He is doing OK at this point, a little shaken up,” Richard said, adding he was taken to police headquarters so that he could talk about the incident.
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.
National News
Related Photos
-
Klein Michael Thaxton, center, is lead into Pittsburgh Police headquarters after being apprehended without incident at Three Gateway Center in Pittsburgh, Friday Sept. 21, 2012. Thaxton held a businessman hostage inside the office building for more than five hours Friday, posting Facebook updates during the standoff, and surrendered to authorities without incident, police said. AP Photo/The Tribune-Review, JC Schisler
Discussion
Police: Hostage-taker surrenders in Pittsburgh
- National News
-
-
American will favor passengers without roller bags
If you’re traveling light, you can board earlier on American Airlines.
-
Senate panel considers labor board nominees
Senate Republicans said Thursday they would not support five nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, raising the possibility the troubled agency could be rendered mostly inoperable later this year.
-
No Powerball winner; jackpot soars to $475 million
So you didn’t win Wednesday’s $360 million Powerball jackpot? Make that you and everyone else.
-
INFLUENCE GAME: Tech, labor spar on immigration
To the U.S. technology industry, there’s a dramatic shortfall in the number of Americans skilled in computer programming and engineering that is hampering business.
-
Health reforms penalize some Indians
When Liz DeRouen needs any kind of health care services, from diabetes counseling to a dental cleaning, she checks into a government-funded clinic in Northern California’s wine country that covers all her medical needs.
-
Pennsylvania abortion doctor gets third life sentence
A Philadelphia abortion doctor was sentenced Wednesday to a third life term for killing an aborted baby he described as so big it could “walk to the bus.”
-
For Minnesota gay marriage sponsors, it’s personal
When Gov. Mark Dayton adds his signature to the bill legalizing gay marriage in Minnesota later Tuesday, its two main sponsors will stand triumphantly beside him admiring the fruits of their long and often demoralizing struggle for gay rights.
-
Angelina Jolie says she had double mastectomy
Angelina Jolie says that she has had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that made it extremely likely she would get breast cancer.
-
Wind farms get pass on eagle deaths
It happens about once a month here, on the barren foothills of one of America’s green-energy boomtowns: A soaring golden eagle slams into a wind farm’s spinning turbine and falls, mangled and lifeless, to the ground.
-
Govt obtains wide AP phone records in probe
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
- More National News Headlines
-
American will favor passengers without roller bags
Raw: Accused US Spy Reportedly Leaves Russia
AP CEO: Records Seizure 'Unconstitutional'
Fatal Hot Air Balloon Accident in Turkey
Tornadoes, Storms Strike Midwest
'Babyland': Camp Lejeune's Toxic Legacy?
Raw: Heavy Tornado Damage in Shawnee, Okla
Probe Begins After Conn. Commuter Trains Crash
NTSB Begins Investigation Into Conn. Train Crash
Lotto Fever Sweeps the Country
Coffee Run Leads to Hatchet Hitchhiker Arrest
Fmr. IRS Head Insists No Politics in Targeting
CDC: Fecal Bacteria Common in Swimming Pools
Could Tobacco Be the Next Biofuel?
Wash. State Releases Draft Rules for Legal Pot
