Dec 5, 2007 8:30 pm US/Eastern
Man In Clinton Office Drama Was Thinking Suicide
NEW YORK (AP) ―
The
man accused of taking hostages at a Hillary Clinton campaign office in
New Hampshire said in an interview he had hoped the standoff would end
in his death, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
"My intent was actually almost like a suicide by cop," Leeland Eisenberg told the Daily News in a jailhouse interview.
Eisenberg,
46, is accused of taking six hostages at Clinton's storefront campaign
office in Rochester on Friday, showing them road flares strapped to his
chest and claiming they were explosives. State police negotiators
coaxed Eisenberg to surrender and no one was hurt.
In the interview with the News in Wednesday's editions, he expressed disappointment in how his surrender ended.
"I
knew once the last hostage went out the door, there would be no reason
for them to have restraint," Eisenberg said of police. "I could see the
sharpshooter. He was all dressed in camouflage, and he had one of those
laser lights on his rifle... I didn't have my hands up or nothing. I
just walked toward the door, thinking, 'This is it, he'll take me out.'
So I swing the door open, and he still didn't shoot me, and I'm like,
'What do I gotta do here?"'
During the interview with the
News, he said he had been diagnosed as bipolar and that it was his
mental health condition -- combined with the loss of his job as a sales
manager and his wife's filing for divorce -- that led him to feel
"apathetic and despondent."
He said he got the idea for the bomb from something he saw on television.
"I
just snapped," he said. "I kept hearing these voices saying to me that
I need to sacrifice myself to make a statement for mental health for
everybody, to bring this issue to the forefront."
A judge on Monday ordered Eisenberg to be held on $500,000 cash bail and to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
Eisenberg
faces charges of kidnapping, criminal threatening and fraudulent use of
a bomb-like device. He will not enter pleas until the case reaches
Superior Court.
Massachusetts officials said Friday that
Eisenberg was released from prison in March 2005 after completing a
sentence, but state law prevented them from giving details of the
conviction or charge.
Eisenberg's criminal record in New
Hampshire began after his release in 2005 when he was charged with
failing to register as a sex offender, said Strafford County prosecutor
Janice Rundles. He was convicted the following year, she said.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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