A man who took a person hostage in a Pittsburgh office tower and was apparently updating his Facebook account as the drama unfolded has surrendered to the police.

The man, identified by the police as Klein Michael Thaxton, 22, went into the office tower at the Gateway Center in downtown Pittsburgh just after 8 a.m. There, at CW Breitsman Associates, a company that administers pension plans on the 16th floor of the high-rise, the suspect took at least one person hostage.

Nate Harper, Pittsburgh’s police chief, initially said that the suspect might be armed with a gun and a bomb. But he said the man later gave himself up, after negotiations with officers and after his mother spoke to him. No one was injured, he said, but it was not initially clear whether the suspect had a weapon.



“Negotiators were successfully able to talk the suspect into surrendering,” he said, speaking to reporters about six hours after the ordeal started.

Mr. Thaxton drew attention to the standoff by updating his status on Facebook. A profile page in his name on Facebook shows a self-made photograph of a man’s muscular torso, superimposed on a backdrop of images of the faces of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel flanking that of President Barack Obama.

At around 9 a.m., one status update read: “welln pops youll never have to woryy about me again you’ll nevr need to by me anything no need to ever waste ur hard earned money on me. i’ll live n jail you dnt want me around anymore thats kool bye…i love u assata sis”

Another said: “i cant take it no more im done bro.”

Chief Harper said the suspect had walked into the office and “started asking questions about an individual.” He added that initially it was not clear who the individual was or what the person’s relationship was with the suspect.

Some readers of the Facebook page, which had about 566 friends, posted back, some of them mocking, while a few were trying to help.

“there’s always a storm before a blessing baby its never as bad as it seems if u didn’t have a purpose n life then u wouldn’t b here your mom loves u and I’m sure it’ll kill her to lose her baby.”

Mr. Thaxton’s Facebook page says he graduated from high school in 2008 and from Triangle Tech, a trade school, the same year. The police chief said that he had been in the military, but did not say which branch of service.

Friends wrote in telling him to pray, or that they loved him. One poster wrote “come on cuz u better then that man let dat girl go” according to a partial excerpt.