Skip to footer

Suspect in custody following threat at LA Times building

A man was arrested Friday night following a text message saying there may be someone 'about to start shooting,' in the Los Angeles Times building. The man was connected to Vxi Global Solutions, a company that rents space in the building from the Times.

  • By Associated Press

| Los Angeles

Police took a man into custody Friday night inside the Los Angeles Times building after it was locked down because of a shooting threat report, the newspaper said.

The man was detained by police and removed from the building less than an hour after the threat report, the Times said. The man does not work for the newspaper but is connected to Vxi Global Solutions, which rents office space in the building.

Officers searched the building but found no weapon and the lockdown was lifted by 9 p.m., police Lt. Lonnie Benson said.

Police said the man was 28 years old, but did not immediately release his name.

A radio call went out at 7:26 p.m. notifying police that a text message sent from inside the building said there may be someone "about to start shooting," Detective Gus Villanueva told The Associated Press. The Times building is across the street from LAPD headquarters.

The Times reported that the man said he had been depressed, didn't mind killing someone, showed a co-worker a bag of bullets and said he didn't want to go to jail.

The building at 1st and Spring streets has been headquarters of the Los Angeles Times since 1935.

Several other businesses and government agencies rent space from the Times in the building, including Vxi Global Solutions, which provides customer service and technical support by phone for other businesses. A message left for company representatives by the AP was not immediately returned.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Suspect in custody following threat at LA Times building
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0419/Suspect-in-custody-following-threat-at-LA-Times-building
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe