A Billings television station had an unsettling encounter Monday night.
KTVQ News Director Jon Stepanek said he was coming back to the station around 4:30 p.m. Monday when he ran into a man on the TV station doorstep.
He said the man pointed down to a clear tote, said “This is for you. Nobody cares about me,” and walked away.
Stepanek said the tote was covered in writing, much of it illegible, although it included some religious text and profanity, and there was a second item which looked like a television antennae wrapped in electrical tape.
He said he immediately called the police.
When the Billings police bomb squad arrived, they moved everyone to a safe spot in the building and closed down the street while they used a robot to detonate the items.
Meanwhile, Stepanek said, KTVQ went to work covering the story.
“If it were to have happened at another business, we would have definitely been covering that,” he said. “It wouldn’t be any different if it was us, so we wanted to just report it as a straight news story, but at the same time there was a heightened sense of we need to make sure that the people in our building are safe.”
According to a police department press release, none of the items in the tote posed an actual threat.
While KTVQ is located downtown and clearly marked, Stepanek saic he’s not sure what the man’s motivations were if he had any.
Since Monday, police have identified the person who left the objects as a 40-year-old with mental health issues. According to the Associated Press, one of the objects was a homemade light saber, and the man was brought to the Billings Clinic.
