Hostage-taker communicates through Facebook during six hour siege
Klein Michael Thaxton took to Facebook yesterday, 21 September, in a bid to communicate with the outside world after taking a man hostage in a Pittsburgh office building.
The running commentary to his 566 friends included emotional, misspelled, posts which detailed that he was “tired of life” and had “lost everything.” Friends responded with pleas for Thaxton to end the situation peacefully.
One Facebook message from Thaxton said: “this life im livn rite now i dnt want anymore ive lost everything and i aint getting it back."
Later, he asked others to stop posting “silly” things to his page, adding: “i aint laughin rite now”.
His profile page had featured an image of a man’s torso alongside pictures of Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.
His communication through Facebook ended when his page was taken down after five hours, with Thaxton surrendering peacefully just one hour later. He made no demands and did not reveal why he had targeted the founder of CW Breitsman Associates, who was released unharmed.