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| 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. |
PITTSBURGH
(AP) -- Klein Michael Thaxton hadn't been much of a Facebook devotee. He
posted no status updates in two years on the social network. On Friday,
though, he surfaced with a jarring post: "i cant take it no more im
done bro."
The 22-year-old Army veteran was on
the 16th floor of a downtown Pittsburgh office building at the time,
armed with a hammer and kitchen knife, and holding a businessman
hostage, police said.
He surrendered after
more than five hours. Neither he nor the hostage, business owner Charles
Breitsman, 58, was injured. But Thaxton's real-time Facebook updates -
coupled with online pleas by his friends to surrender - vividly
illustrated the evolving challenges that confront police when social
media plays an active role in a crime-in-progress.
In all, Thaxton sent seven messages, many of them despairing and written in disjointed style.
"this life im livin rite now i dnt want anymore," said one post. "ive lost everything and I aint gettin it back."
Thaxton's friends responded by urging him to end the situation peacefully, including one who asked him to think of his mother.
"dude, you gotta purpose here in life, and this ain't it yo, people do care man, they do," another wrote.
Initially,
police wanted the Facebook page kept open, hoping to gain useful
information, but they later asked Facebook to take it down so that
Thaxton could focus on communicating with authorities.
The
Facebook exchanges had the potential to both help and harm those
efforts, said Police Chief Nathan Harper. It was helpful that Thaxton
could see "that people are concerned about his well-being," the chief
said, but "it is a distraction for negotiating."
Hours
into the standoff, Pittsburgh's public safety director, Michael Huss,
asked the media to refrain from reporting about the Facebook page,
though many outlets had already done so.
Thaxton
served as a private in the U.S. Army from December 2008 to June 2010.
The Army said he trained at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri before being
assigned to Fort Riley in Kansas.
He also has a
criminal record, including a guilty plea to robbery earlier this year
in a special county court for military veterans with mental health or
addiction problems.
The hostage-taking was the
latest striking example of how Facebook and other social media can
inject the public into crime dramas in ways that were inconceivable in
the pre-Internet age.
In the old days, police
would call the telephone company and ask that the hostage-taker's phone
number be changed immediately so no one else could call it, said Gary
Noesner, a former chief of the FBI's crisis negotiation unit.
In
this case, countless people had the ability to communicate with
Thaxton, sending him comments and potentially provoking him, "for better
or for worse," said Steve Jones, a professor who studies online culture
at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"We
don't really know what the perpetrators pay attention to," Jones said.
"Is he reading every post? How does he interpret those posts? What might
set him off or what might get him to calm down?"
A
former criminal profiling expert with the FBI, Mary Ellen O'Toole, said
the decision by police to ultimately shut down Thaxton's Facebook page
made sense, just as there was reason to leave it up in the beginning.
"You
really do have to be very careful. It may not take much to make that
person even more erratic, more irrational," she added, noting that
negative posts "could really cause him to go terribly sideways."
Harper
said police counted 700 posts, most of them helpful to police in that
they expressed concern for Thaxton or encouraged his surrender. But some
were "ridiculous" and others "outright distasteful," the chief said. If
police determine any of the posts urged Thaxton to harm Breitsman or
himself, those posters could eventually face charges, too.
The hostage owned CW Breitsman Associates, which runs employee-benefits programs for other businesses.
Thaxton
rode a bike to the high-rise and took an elevator to the 16th floor
because he didn't have proper security cards to get into the highest
floors, Harper said.
Investigators determined
that Thaxton picked the office at random after noticing through a glass
door or window that Breitsman had an iPhone, computer and TV in his
office that Thaxton, correctly, believed he could use to call attention
to himself, Harper said.
Investigators would
like to know why Thaxton wanted to create a public spectacle, Harper
said, "but we will leave that to the mental professionals to figure that
out and get the man some help."
Thaxton was
charged with kidnapping, terroristic threats and aggravated assault and
may be charged with escape once police identify the halfway house where
he was reportedly living after a recent carjacking conviction, Harper
said.
Thaxton saw Breitsman's name on an
office door and asked for him by name but, before that, didn't know
Breitsman or have any connection to him, Harper said.
Police
spokeswoman Diane Richard said Breitsman was able to meet with his
family after Thaxton surrendered a little before 2 p.m.
"He is doing OK at this point, a little shaken up," Richard said.
Facebook
did not comment on the Pittsburgh hostage-taking, but referred
reporters to a page describing how it works with law enforcement. The
page says Facebook may share information with law enforcement if deemed
necessary to "prevent imminent bodily harm" to someone.
The
social network's nearly 1 billion users come from all walks of life,
including criminals. Some of them boast about their exploits on
Facebook, often making it easier for law enforcement to track them down.
Last
year, a Utah man named Jason Valdez posted updates on his Facebook page
during a 16-hour standoff with police. According to reports at the
time, some of his friends and relatives urged him to "be careful" while
at least one tipped him off to the location of a SWAT officer.
In
another Utah case last year, a woman used Facebook to seek help after
she and her 17-month-old son were held hostage at a residence for nearly
five days. According to police, the woman hid in a closet with a laptop
to post her plea for help, saying she and her son would be "dead by
morning" if they were not rescued.
