COLORADO SPRINGS – The man who police say staged a deadly shooting attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic that offers abortion services said “no more baby parts” after his arrest, a law enforcement official said Saturday.
The official could not elaborate about the comment by the 57-year-old suspect, Robert Lewis Dear. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation.
Planned Parenthood said late Saturday that witnesses said the gunman was motivated by his opposition to abortion.
Police, however, have not disclosed a motive for Friday’s attack during which they say Dear stormed the Colorado Springs clinic, killing three people, including a police officer, before he surrendered to authorities.
The attack thrust the clinic to the center of the ongoing debate over Planned Parenthood, which was re-ignited in July when anti-abortion activists released undercover video they said showed the organization’s personnel negotiating the sale of fetal organs.
Planned Parenthood has denied seeking any payments beyond legally permitted reimbursement costs for donating the organs to researchers. Still, the National Abortion Federation says it has since seen a rise in threats at clinics nationwide.
The anti-abortion activists, part of a group called the Center for Medical Progress, denounced the “barbaric killing spree in Colorado Springs by a violent madman” and offered prayers for the dead and wounded and for their families.
The facility provides women’s health services and has long been the site of regular anti-abortion protests. A Roman Catholic priest who has held weekly Mass in front of the clinic for 20 years said Dear wasn’t part of his group.
“I don’t know him from Adam,” said Rev. Bill Carmody. “I don’t recognize him at all.”
Dear, who was in custody and is expected to make his first court appearance Monday, was described by neighbors as reclusive. They said he stashed food in the woods, avoided eye contact and warned neighbors about government spying.
At a vigil Saturday at All Souls Unitarian Church, Rev. Nori Rost called the gunman a “domestic terrorist.” In the back of the room, someone held a sign that said: “Women’s bodies are not battlefields. Neither is our town.”
Vicki Cowart, the regional head of Planned Parenthood, drew a standing ovation when she walked to the pulpit. She promised to quickly reopen the clinic. “We will adapt. We will square our shoulders and we will go on,” she said.
After her remarks, a woman in the audience stood up, objected to the vigil becoming a “political statement” and left.
Cowart said the gunman “broke in” to the clinic Friday but didn’t get past a locked door leading to the main part of the facility. She said there was no armed security when the shooting began. He later surrendered to police after an hours-long standoff.
Police say Dear entered the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs and opened fire Friday. The five-hour siege that followed included several gun battles with police as patients and staff members took cover under furniture and inside locked rooms.
By the time the shooter surrendered, three people were dead, including a police officer. Nine others were wounded.
It marked the latest mass shooting to stun the nation and prompted President Barack Obama to warn, “We can’t let it become normal.”
“If we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience, then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them,” Obama said.
University of Colorado police officer Garrett Swasey, 44, a six-year veteran of the force, was killed during the siege. He was married and had a son and daughter, according to the website of his church, Hope Chapel in Colorado Springs.
No details were immediately available about the two civilians who died. Five other officers and four people were hospitalized but were in good condition.
“Certainly it could have been much, much worse if it were not for the heroism of our police officers to corner the person in the building,” Colorado Springs Fire Chief Chris Riley said.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene when the shooting first started just before noon.
Ozy Licano said he was in the parking lot of the two-story building and trying to escape in his car when the gunman looked at him.
“He came out, and we looked each other in the eye, and he started aiming, and then he started shooting,” Licano said. “I saw two holes go right through my windshield as I was trying to quickly back up and he just kept shooting and I started bleeding.”
Licano drove away and took refuge at a nearby grocery store.
“He was aiming for my head,” Licano said of the gunman. “It’s just weird to stare in the face of someone like that. And he didn’t win.”
For hours, police had no communication with the shooter other than hearing his intermittent gunfire from inside the Colorado Springs clinic. Officers eventually moved in, shouted at the gunman and persuaded him to surrender, police said.
About five hours after the attack started, authorities led away a man wearing a white T-shirt.
With the immediate threat over, authorities swept the building and turned their attention to inspecting unspecified items the gunman left outside the building or carried inside in bags. They were concerned that he had planted improvised explosive devices meant to cause even more destruction.
Police Lt. Catherine Buckley said Saturday the items were no longer a threat. She declined to elaborate.
Dear’s cabin is a half-mile up a curvy dirt road about 15 miles west of Asheville, North Carolina. He also had a trailer in the nearby town of Swannanoa.
Other neighbors knew Dear but didn’t want to give their names because they said they were fearful he might retaliate.
Russell and others said the only companion they saw with Dear was a mangy dog, who looked to be in such bad shape they called animal control because they worried he was beating it.
Dear has had several run-ins with police. In 1997, his then-wife said he hit her and pushed her out a window after locking her out of their home. A neighbor accused him of peering into her home, but a Peeping Tom charge against Dear was dismissed a month after it was filed. Police were also called to his home after his neighbor’s dog was shot with a pellet gun.
His South Carolina neighbors say he hid food in the woods and liked to skinny dip.
John Hood said Dear once recommended that Hood put a metal roof on his home so the U.S. government couldn’t spy on him.
Dear made money by selling prints of his uncle Bill Stroud’s paintings, Hood said.
Dear had an address in the town of Hartsel, about 60 miles west of Colorado Springs. Jamie Heffelman, owner of the Highline Cafe in Hartsel, said residents would occasionally see Dear at the post office to get his mail but he never said much. “Nobody really knows him, he stays to himself,” she said.
