A man wearing a panda suit who allegedly made a bomb threat at Fox Television’s Baltimore affiliate on Thursday was shot by police outside the building, the station reported.
The man was not killed, Baltimore police told a news conference, and police said they sent a robot to check on the man, who was described as in his 20s. The police said they had no information yet on the man’s identify.
The man broke into the Fox affiliate, which is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, “demanding the news station cover a story about some sort of government conspiracy,” the television station, WBFF, said.
The man was wearing a white, one-piece panda suit with a surgical mask and sunglasses, news director Mike Tomko said on the station’s website.
“He had a flash drive, said he had information he wanted to get on the air. He compared it to the information found in the Panama Papers,” Tomko said, referring to a massive leak of offshore financial data. “Apparently he had made some threats before.”
A brief video on the station’s website showed the man walking out of the station.
The station said it evacuated the building after the bomb threat and a fire. The station said firefighters put out a fire in the gas tank of a car in the station’s parking lot. {eoa}
© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.
