LOS ANGELES : Man Took Hostage to Tell of World’s End, Court Told
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A man who believes he is the messenger of God took a maid hostage at an airport hotel and made terrorist threats to spread his message that the end of the world was near, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
“He has a very strong spiritual belief,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Sally Lipscomb said in her opening statement in the trial of Rollen Frederick Stewart.
Stewart’s attorney, Rita Smith, declined to make an opening statement. Her client sat quietly throughout the morning with a well-worn Bible in front of him.
Stewart, 48, dubbed the “Rainbow Man” for wearing a colorful wig and hoisting religious placards at televised sports events, faces life in prison if he is convicted on 10 felony counts.
The majority of those charges stem from a Sept. 22 standoff in which he barricaded himself in a room on the seventh floor of the Hyatt hotel near Los Angeles International Airport for nine hours, Lipscomb said.
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