The hedgehog onesie-clad man who threatened to blow up a Baltimore TV station wanted the news channel to broadcast his theory about the imminent apocalypse, police said.
Videos found on a flash drive Alex Brizzi delivered to the Fox 45 building detailed his hypothesis that will end on June 3, police said Friday. Just after forking the device over, the 25-year-old threatened to set off a fake suicide vest, which turned out to be made of candy bars and wires.
“The flash drive contained video rants of Brizzi talking about the end of the world,” Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said.
MAN IN SUIT AND MASK SHOT BY COPS AFTER THREAT TO BLOW UP TV STATION
Brizzi — who was shot by a sniper but is expected to survive — faces a slew of charges, including arson, reckless endangerment and possessing a phony destructive device, police said Friday.
Police said they’re unsure why Brizzi, who was wearing a hedgehog costume and a surgical mask at the time of the attack, targeted Fox 45 over other media outlets. Officials said many of Baltimore’s news stations are close together, and the Fox affiliate is closest to the main road.
“I think what it is he wanted to go to a media outlet so he pass his message on that the world’s going to end on June the third,” the suspect’s father, Edward Brizzi, told WBFF-TV, adding that his son suffered an apparent mental breakdown about two weeks ago after breaking up with his girlfriend.
Police said that after the onesie-wearing Brizzi handed his flash drive to a security guard in the station’s lobby Thursday, he threatened to blow himself up. The wannabe bomber wore what looked like a suicide vest — but the “lethal” device turned out to be a red life vest covered in tin foil-wrapped chocolate bars connected together with wires, police said.
Believing the vest was full of real explosives, security evacuated the building as Brizzi barricaded himself inside.
Meanwhile, Brizzi’s black sedan became engulfed in flames outside as police, fire, arson, bomb squad and SWAT teams arrived. Officials are unsure exactly what caused the blaze, but have slapped Brizzi with arson and related charges.
After the building was evacuated, Brizzi walked out of the lobby and into the street, where he ignored heavily armed officers’ orders to show his hands.
Four cops shot at Brizzi, who was hit at least three times, Baltimore police spokesman T. J. Smith. Officers communicated with him via a bomb-detecting robot, and when Brizzi removed the fake bomb, paramedics put him in an ambulance and rushed him to a local hospital.
He remained hospitalized in serious but stable condition Friday afternoon.
Brizzi was charged with two felonies — malicious burning and second-degree arson — and a slew of misdemeanors, including reckless endangerment and threat of arson, police said Friday.
Edward Brizzi said his son’s attitude changed about two weeks ago, after he split with his girlfriend. The younger Brizzi snapped, and one night was found sleeping in a neighbor’s yard. It took seven police officers to hold him down as he was taken to a local hospital, the father said.
Edward Brizzi and his wife couldn’t force their son to get treatment after his breakdown because he is an adult, but he said he believes his son will go to a mental health center after his recovery.
“We really didn’t think he was a risk to himself and he’s never been a risk to anyone else,” he said.
With News Wire services
