SkyTeam 11 Capt. Roy Taylor said the man has been taken to Shock Trauma and is still alive.

Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said the man voluntarily walked out and down 41st Street, but did not listen to officers' orders and kept his hands in his pockets. That's when a counter-sniper opened fire with lethal force (not rubber bullets or beanbags). As there is still what he claimed to be a bomb attached to his chest, he remains on the median of 41st Street and is conscious. Police are interacting with him and manipulating his body using a bomb-handling robot.

"The suspect at this time is not deceased," Davis said. "The suspect is still not complying with the orders."

He described as a white male in his 20s. Police don't yet have a motive.

"Why did he do this? We don't know the answer to that, and we want to know the answer to that," Davis said.

Davis said he realizes people will raise questions about the fact that the man has not yet been treated by paramedics, but emphasized police can't guarantee that the device strapped to the man is safe. The robot has removed the hedgehog onesie worn by the man and removed the rest of his clothes before he was eventually loaded by SWAT officers into an armored vehicle, then an ambulance.

"We want to treat him," Davis said

WBFF reporters and staff from nearby stations are tweeting from the scene. All staff and police are accounted for.

The studio is in the 2000 block of West 41st Street. The building was evacuated around the time police were called at 1:20 p.m. and police and fire resources responded to the scene.

"I would say I've never had to evacuate because of a threat," said WBFF-TV news director Mike Tomko, who added the station's newscasts tonight would proceed as usual if they're allowed back inside.

If not, The Baltimore Sun reports, they will carry the newscast from sister station WJLA or use a remote production truck to broadcast from across the street.

"[The newsroom employees] are a little worried, but everybody's safe," Tomko said. "They're all professionals."

He said it's not unusual for people to visit the station trying to get their message across, but what happened here is: a man wearing a mask and sunglasses entered and said he had a bomb.

The security guard, Jourel Apostolidies, said the man handed him a flash drive. On the drive were videos of the man talking to the camera about what he believed were government conspiracies regarding the Panama Papers.

"My first thought was to get him out," he said. "My first instinct was to make sure he keeps his cool head."

The man was wearing a hedgehog onesie, light vest and combat boots, Apostolidies said. After he issued a request for staff to evacuate, he said he sat down and talked with the man.

"I'm not going to say I saw a bomb, what I saw was an attempt to make a fake bomb," he said.

Police credited the work of staff like Apostolidies for surreptitiously calling 911 and facilitating a safe and orderly evacuation.

In 2014, a disturbed man rammed a dump truck into the studios of WMAR-TV in Towson, an incident police spokesman TJ Smith noted led other broadcasters in Baltimore to step up security. The suspect in Thursday's incident got no further than the vestibule.

Davis said a car fire at the scene was arson-related, with a rag around the area of the gas tank. He said police now need to check the other vehicles and the rest of the building, though it's not clear whether the car fire and bomb scare are directly related.

"We're going to be here for a while," Davis said.