A man wearing what appeared to be a bomb took five people hostage at a Hillary Clinton campaign office in Rochester yesterday and demanded to speak with the candidate. He surrendered peacefully after a five-hour standoff with local, state and federal authorities.

Leeland Eisenberg, 46, of Somersworth emerged from the office on Main Street about 6:15 p.m., after releasing the last of the hostages. Wearing gray pants, a white dress shirt and a red tie, Eisenberg walked into the street, got down on the ground and spread his arms as a SWAT team surrounded him with guns drawn. He was handcuffed, placed in a tactical response vehicle and driven to the Rochester Police Department.

After investigating the bomb-like device, authorities said it was made up of road flares. Eisenberg had duct-taped them to his chest and walked into the office carrying what resembled a detonator, said state police Col. Frederick Booth. No one was injured in the standoff.

Clinton was not in New Hampshire at the time but flew to the state late last night to meet with the staff and volunteers who had been held hostage.

"This has been a very hard day for all of us in our campaign," she said outside her home in Washington yesterday evening, according to the Associated Press. "Everything stopped. It had to. We had nothing on our minds except the safety of these young people."

Rochester Police Chief David Dubois said Eisenberg faces multiple charges, including criminal threatening, kidnapping and reckless operation.

Each of the charges could carry penalties of 7½ to 15 years imprisonment, and Eisenberg could face additional federal charges, New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said. Local and state law enforcement officers will work with federal authorities to determine how to proceed.

With the standoff over, it remained unclear why Eisenberg targeted Clinton's office. Clinton did not participate in the hostage negotiations, Booth said, although she offered to assist in any way. Law enforcement decided against Clinton's participation: "If we had put that chip up at the very beginning, then there was no place to negotiate," Booth said.

The portrait of Eisenberg that emerged last night was of a troubled man well-known to the local police. He was scheduled to appear in court yesterday on a domestic violence complaint filed by his wife, Foster's Daily Democrat reported.

Chelsea Coull, a server at the Governor's Inn in Rochester, had a midday run-in with a man who called himself Eisenberg's stepson. The man entered the inn in search of coffee and proceeded to tell Coull that his stepfather "is the guy who's causing all this mess," said Coull, 19.

The stepson said that three months ago, his mother asked his stepfather for a divorce, "and since then he'd been going downhill," Coull said. "He said he'd stayed with his stepdad last night," and that the stepfather had been drinking for 72 hours, asked where to purchase roadside flares and said that he needed to be hospitalized, Coull said. Yesterday morning, the stepson said that his stepfather told him to watch the day's news.

The standoff began shortly before 1 p.m., when Eisenberg entered the Rochester storefront that serves as the local Clinton office, the police said. For much of the standoff, the hostages acted as mediators between Eisenberg and a team of five hostage negotiators from the state, local and federal law enforcement agencies.

When Eisenberg arrived, three Clinton employees, one volunteer and one infant were inside, Dubois said. Eisenberg immediately released one woman with the infant, leaving two young women and a young man as hostages.

"A young woman with a 6-month- or 8-month-old infant came running into the store just in tears," Lettie Tzizik, an employee of nearby Carney Medical Supply, told WMUR-TV. "You need to call 911. A man has just walked into the Clinton office, opened his coat and showed us a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape."

The Rochester Police contacted the state police and began evacuating businesses, residents and one school near the downtown area. Barack Obama's Rochester campaign office, which lies mere feet from the Clinton office, was also evacuated. The effort would eventually include members of state and local departments, as well as the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

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