Tag-Archive for » maryland «
Tims’s body was discovered Friday afternoon when a worker trying to check the minibar in his room at the W Hotel, and found the room’s door latched from the inside. A maintenance worker opened the door and found Tims lying on his back between the bedroom and living room area. According to a law enforcement official, police found a glassine envelope with a white powerdery substance inside the right pocket of his shorts.
The substance was being tested, according to a law enforcement official.
Another law enforcement official familiar with the case said, “what that white powdery substance is and whether it played a role in Mr. Tims’ death is still to be determined.”
Police found no signs of trauma to his body. At this point criminality is not suspected, officials said. Detectives spoke with his family members and it appears Tims died in possession of his jewelry and other belongings.
Tims was in town for a meeting and was supposed to leave for Texas last Thursday, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter.
Tims was a young drug addict in Maryland when he was “miraculously saved” according to his website and a memoir published in 2006. After discovering Christianity, he earned degrees in accounting and theology and worked at a ministry in Baltimore. In 1996, he and his wife Riva moved to Orlando, where they founded the New Destiny Christian Center.
At the ministry’s first service, six people gathered in a hotel room, according to the ministry’s website. In 1999, they purchased a church; two years later, the ministry expanded to a second 21-acre-location dubbed “City of Destiny.”
As the church grew, it was able to bestow lavish benefits, even giving away cars to members, according to its website.
Tims’s memoir and self-help book, “It’s Never Too Late: How a teenage criminal found his divine destiny and became a successful millionaire and pastor of a thriving church,” released through Charisma House Publications in 2006, sold “fairly well,” moving around 23,000 copies, said Woodley Auguste, the imprint’s director of marketing and publicity.
U.S. police shot and killed a man who took three people hostage, waving a gun and apparently fitted out with explosives, in the headquarters of the Discovery Channel near Washington on Wednesday.
Officers who had been watching the hostage drama on a building security camera crept in while police negotiated with the emotional gunman and shot him when he pointed his pistol at one of the three men he held hostage.
“A hostage moved, he pulled his gun, and a shot was taken,” Montgomery County police chief Tom Manger told reporters. He said the suspect was killed and the hostages were safe.
The man, named by a U.S. law enforcement official as James Lee, had been arrested before for protesting against Discovery Channel over environmental issues.
“He had a history … of conflict with Discovery,” Manger said.
The incident caused chaos in Silver Spring, Maryland, a shopping and office district and commuter hub on the edge of the U.S. capital.
Police sealed off the area around the building and SWAT teams deployed shortly after the suspect entered the building carrying a handgun at about 1 p.m. Manger said county and state police, FBI and Homeland Security agents joined the operation.
The building, where nearly 1,900 employees work, was evacuated and children were rushed from a day-care centre.
Police said they were still trying to determine whether two boxes and two backpacks that the hostage-taker had were explosive devices. Bomb-sniffing dogs checked the area before workers were allowed to leave neighbouring buildings.