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Security guard shoots angry man during attack on Washington Fox affiliate, police say

Posted at 8:28 AM, Oct 23, 2018
and last updated 2018-10-23 10:57:35-04

A security guard shot and injured an “irate” man who kicked through the glass doors at a Fox station in Washington, police and a law enforcement source said.

The suspect in the Monday afternoon incident is George Odemns, 38, police said. He had no fixed address.

Odemns was angry when he entered the lobby of the building housing the WTTG news offices, where the security guard shot him, the source told CNN.

The suspect was not armed, Cmdr. Melvin Gresham of the Metropolitan Police Department said. The guard was commissioned as a District of Columbia special police officer, according to the department.

Video footage from WTTG shows the suspect approach the front door, turn his back to it and thrust his heel into the safety glass, which breaks away from the door in one piece.

In the vestibule, he encounters a second door, the video shows. He turns his back again and hits the door with his heel five times before it separates from the door. He pulls the glass out of the door and enters the building. The footage does not show his encounter with security.

The man was alert after being shot, Gresham said.

A tweet from a Fox 5 reporter showed paramedics wheeling the conscious suspect, an oxygen mask on his face, to an ambulance and placing him inside on a gurney.

Odemns was in critical but stable condition late Monday, the Metropolitan Police Department said. He stands charged with burglary.

Investigators believe the security guard ended the threat when the suspect was shot, but they’re continuing to gather details, the law enforcement source said.

Odemns has previously filed lawsuits against President Donald Trump’s administration, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, the National Rifle Association and the Murdoch Family Trust, which owns News Corp., CNN affiliate WJLA reported.

He had also emailed WTTG on multiple occasions, WJLA reported. WTTG characterized those correspondences as“bizarre and rambling.”

It’s the second time in seven weeks that someone has attacked a Fox affiliate. In early September, Michael Fry repeatedly rammed his pickup truck into the Fox 4 News building in downtown Dallas, CNN affiliate KTVT reported.

He then jumped out of his truck and began yelling and throwing documents and printed news stories about a 2012 police shooting. He never entered the building.

Fry did not make sense when he spoke to police, and Dallas police Maj. Max Geron told KTVT that Fry had mental issues.

A gunman in Juneopened fire inside the newsroom of Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, killing five employees. The newspaper’s office is about 30 miles from WTTG.