Bomb/hostage situation at Hillary’s NH campaign HQ (SITUATION ENDS PEACEFULLY – MAN ARRESTED)

Posted by: ST on November 30, 2007 at 2:09 pm

Scary situation:

ROCHESTER, N.H. – A man has taken people hostage at a New Hampshire campaign office for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, police said Friday.

The man claimed to have bomb strapped to him when he walked into the office in Rochester, WHDH-TV reported.

WMUR-TV quoted a woman, Lettie Tzizik, saying she spoke to someone who said she had just been released by the man.

“A young woman with a 6-month or 8-month-old infant came rushing into the store just in tears, and she said, ‘You need to call 911. A man has just walked into the Clinton office, opened his coat and showed us a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape,’” Tzikik said, recalling the moment.

Police have surrounded the building, evacuated the immediate area and placed other buildings, including a nearby school, in lockdown.

Clinton, who was scheduled to campaign in Virginia on Friday, was not present at the office on Rochester’s Main Street.

WMUR has live coverage of this developing story. Let’s hope it ends peacefully.

Update I: Bryan at Hot Air is tracking the latest developments.

Update II: Thank goodness it’s over and everyone’s ok. The hostage taker – Leeland Eisenberg of Somersworth, NH – was arrested earlier this evening. Lots more updates here.

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16 Responses to “Bomb/hostage situation at Hillary’s NH campaign HQ (SITUATION ENDS PEACEFULLY – MAN ARRESTED)”

Comments

  1. Lorica says:

    Amen, I pray that no one gets hurt in all of this. It would be very sad if this bomb is real and people got hurt during this. – Lorica

  2. Fat Tone says:

    Have the democrats inside surrendered to the hostage taker yet ?
    Jokes aside…I hope no one gets hurt.

  3. Severian says:

    Hopefully he doesn’t have a real bomb and is just bluffing, the guy is obviously a nutjob.

    Now, is he a right winger? Or a leftist MoveOn/DKos type who’s just really fed up with Hillary for her vote on the Iraq War? Or just a generic, attention seeking wacko? Time will tell of course.

    OTOH, I guess he may be the only person who may have found a way to get Hillary to listen to an unscripted question.

    I’m also completely certain that no matter how this turns out, Hillary’s spin doctors will spin this into a martyr “poor lil’Hillary is under attack” thing. If they did it with a few tough questions in the debate, just think of the field day this guy just handed her campaign.

  4. NC Cop says:

    Unfortunately, tis the season! Incidents like this always pop up around holidays.

    I hope and pray that everyone comes out alive and unharmed.

  5. Mwalimu Daudi says:

    Anyone care to place any bets about how long it will take the far Left to blame (1) conservative talk radio for creating a “climate of hate”, (2) the presence of US troops in Iraq, (3) assault weapons, (4) homelessness, (5) “draconian cuts” in social welfare spending, (6) “climate change”, (7) the ubiquitous Vast-Right-Wing Conspiracy, (8) the Confederate flag, or (9) all of the above?

    My best guess is a combination of (1), (5) and (7) will become the MSM’s talking points by the middle of next week.

  6. Mwalimu Daudi says:

    My bad – it has started already.

    Key quote from the AP piece:

    Eisenberg [the hostage-taker] had a hostage call CNN three times and spoke to network staffers during the standoff, CNN reported after the ordeal was over and all the hostages were safe. Eisenberg said he wanted help getting psychiatric care, but had been turned away because he didn’t have the money.

    “I need to speak to Hillary Clinton,” CNN quoted him as saying. “Something’s got to change. Ordinary people need help” with their insurance.

    The network described Eisenberg as “well-spoken, articulate and impassioned about his cause” but increasingly agitated. His third phone call was laced with profanities, CNN said.

    “Well-spoken” and “articulate”, eh? It’s not hard to figure out now what the MSM’s spin will be: This never would have happened if we had had national health care in the first place. The blame for this barbaric episode can be laid at the feet of opponents of socialized medicine. Remember how the MSM tried to use the tragedy at Virginia Tech earlier this year to agitate for more gun-control laws?

    On the other hand ….. there is something appropriate about the MSM using a madman with a fake bomb as an argument for socialized medicine. Given the absolute and utter failure of “national health care” programs in Europe and Canada, I have long suspected that socialized medicine advocates were sociopaths anyway. Birds of a feather…

  7. Mwalimu Daudi says:

    For some reason, my link in the previous post got changed.

    Here it is.

  8. Steve Skubinna says:

    Well, they never did find the Republican operative who mugged Randi Rhodes, you know. I think they’ve finally flushed him.

  9. MD – dunno what happened there, but sometimes when even a quote mark or something is off in a link, it will redirect to my admin page for some reason … I fixed it for ya :)

  10. jj says:

    After waiting for two days to see how the networks would cover the CNN debate, I see now that we will be treated to non stop news about how well Hillary handles a crisis instead. How convenient!!

  11. Mwalimu Daudi says:

    Here is another spin that I did not think of – the hostage situation “proves” Hillary is presidential material. Yup – all of those police would have no idea of what to do if it were not for St. Hillary!

    Frankly, this makes more sense (politically speaking) than trying to make Eisenberg the Absolute Moral Authority on health care, which was AP’s and CNN’s initial spin.

  12. Steve Skubinna says:

    Yeah, it’s sure lucky for us that Dubya wasn’t president during this horrible cirses, or else we’d all be… huh? What? You sure about that?

    Damn. Uh… what I meant to say was, if Dubya and the Republicans hadn’t marginalized this poor mentally ill man to the point that he felt he had no options than violence… and, uh, Abu Ghraib. Waterboarding. Larry Craig is a homo, nyah nyah nyah!!!

  13. Steve Skubinna says:

    Oh, and global warming, too.

  14. Steve Skubinna says:

    So what’s that stupid cowboy Bushitler going to do about this? Invade Crazystan?

    Oh, ha ha snort, I crack me up. I don’t understand why lefties are such dour, cheerless people. Why, just writing like they do makes me laugh.

    Wait, it must be that whole mental health thing, where Republicans are less, you know, koo-koo than Dems. Or we think we are anyway. Or they think they’re not.

  15. Poet says:

    The Helen Thomas story is why I visit your site, Ms. Toldjah. I had absolutely NO idea that Dana Perino had been so disrespected by Ms. Thomas and that the Presidential Press Secretary responded with such a calm, reasoned smack-down. Somehow that story slipped through my net. Thanks for the alert!

    Keep preaching the truth, Sister. We need your voice out there as loud and correct and often — not to mention respectful — as possible.

  16. Lorica says:

    Hillary for the last few weeks has been running a story about how a man whose Son needed a bone marrow transplant got help after he called Hillary’s office, and that the hospital would pick up their share of the procedure. I have to wonder if this man had seen this commercial a few times and in a desperate strait decided to do something to help him out of his situation. – Lorica