Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Eisenberg Sought 'Suicide by Cop'

The hapless Leeland Eisenberg, who took hostages at Mrs. Clinton's campaign office in Rochester, NH, last Friday, was apparently looking for the police to put him out of misery.

Call me cynical, but I see a townhall-style dialogue with The Pantsuit on the horizon.
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 never to hurt anyone," Leeland Eisenberg told the Daily News in a jailhouse interview. "My intent was actually almost like a suicide by cop."

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."

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