BETHESDA, Md. -- A heavily armed man crashed his luxury car into an IBM office bulding Friday and shot people at random before surrendering more than seven hours later. Two people were killed and 10 others injured.
Police said the gunman was a disgruntled former IBM employee who resigned two years ago and was engaged in 'some kind of grievance or legal action against the company,' International Business Machines Corp.
Just before surrendering at about 6:40 p.m. EDT, the gunman, Edward Mann, 38, of Mitchellville, Md., fired several shots at a picture depicting a courtroom scene, Montgomery County Police Chief Bernard Crooke said.
'Our negotiators talked with him very calmly,' Crooke said. 'We worked out an agreement, and he talked things over with his wife (by telephone). Then he gave himself up.'
Mann was arraigned by a district court comissioner on one count of murder and one count of assault with intent to murder, said Donald Allen, a county police spokesman. Police said other charges are pending against him.
Mann had holed himself up on the top floor of the three-story building where some 700 IBM employees worked, telling police he was holding hostages. But authorities later discovered he was alone and armed with a shotgun, an automatic rifle and two handguns.
The rampage began about 11 a.m. EDT when Mann drove his bronze Lincoln Continental through double glass doors into the lobby of the building located in a populous suburb of Washington, D.C. Witnesses said he leaped from the car and began shooting anyone in his path.
'I heard a crash and I heard a popping noise like firecrackers,' said Chris Shaffer, an IBM employee who escaped injury. 'I saw a man with a black ski mask and an Army fatigue jacket and a small automatic weapon holding it at his waist, shooting.'
Two people were killed and were identified as Hung Phi Nguyen, approximately 40, of Silver Spring, Md. and Larry Lewis Thompson, 56, of Vienna, Va. Ten others were hospitalized, seven with gunshot wounds. Three of the injured were reported in critical condition.
Three of the 10 were not shot -- one suffered a heart attack, another suffered cuts and bruises and a third, Erich Baumgartner, suffered a broken nose and cuts to the hands and face. At least one of the victims was a woman.
Baumgartner, 48, had hidden for cover under a desk. But the gunman stuck a gun in his face and pulled the trigger three times, only to discover the gun was out of ammunition.
Baumgartner jumped at the gunman but was struck in the face with the butt of the gun and fled to an office where he barricaded himself inside.
'In all these disasters we have heroes ... and I think this man certainly qualifies as a hero,' said a doctor who treated Baumgartner.
During the standoff, a dozen IBM employees were barricaded in one section of the building and police escorted others out in small groups.
'We have the door barricaded and we're not going anywhere,' Paul Howard, an IBM systems analyst, said in a telephone interview a short time after the shooting began.
Authorities said a partial list of the injured included Kenneth Tutwiler, 61, in stable condition after suffering a heart attack; Pat Rollins, 28, in satisfactory condition with head lacerations and Baumgartner, in satisfactory condition.
Among those shot were Richard Carl Kreutzberg, 44, in critical condition with multiple gunshot wounds; Doug Sontheimer, 40, in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the left thigh; Warren E. Winnie III, 37, in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the abdomen; Jessie Robert Lewis, 69, in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the neck; John F. Mchale, 36, treated and released for a gunshot wound to a shoulder.
Officials withheld the identities of two of the wounded and the two people who were killed.
