'No more baby parts': Reclusive suspect's words draw focus
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| A crime scene investigator looks over a police vehicle damaged during Friday's shooting spree near a Planned Parenthood clinic Sunday, Nov. 29, 2015, in northwest Colorado Springs, Colo. |
COLORADO
SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- Robert Lewis Dear told authorities "no
more baby parts" after being arrested for the shooting of a Colorado
Planned Parenthood clinic, according to a law enforcement official, part
of a rambling statement that investigators are parsing to understand
the reasoning behind an assault that left three dead.
Colorado
Springs police on Sunday said they would not disclose any information
on the motive for the attack, a move that guarantees further speculation
over the intention of Dear, whom acquaintances described as an odd,
reclusive loner, as he prepares for his initial appearance in state
court on Monday.
Planned Parenthood cited
witnesses as saying the gunman was motivated by his opposition to
abortion. He killed a police officer and two civilians who were
accompanying separate friends to the clinic: Jennifer Markovsky, 36, a
mother of two and Ke'Arre Stewart, 29, an Iraq War veteran and father of
two.
The law enforcement official who
recounted Dear's statement spoke on condition of anonymity because the
official was not allowed to publicly discuss the ongoing investigation.
The official said the "no more baby parts" comment was among a number of
statements he made to authorities after his arrest, making it difficult
to know his specific motivation.
Still, U.S.
Attorney John Walsh said investigators have been in touch with lawyers
from the Justice Department's Civil Rights and National Security
divisions, suggesting officials could pursue federal charges in addition
to state homicide ones. One possible avenue is the 1994 Freedom of
Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which makes it a crime to injure or
intimidate clinic patients and employees.
The
attack thrust the clinic to the center of the debate over Planned
Parenthood, which was reignited in July when anti-abortion activists
released undercover video they said showed the group'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.
Vicki Cowart, the
regional head of Planned Parenthood, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week"
that the
organization has faced hateful speech.
"I
can't believe that this isn't contributing to some folks, mentally
unwell or not, thinking that it's OK to - to target Planned Parenthood
or to target abortion providers," she said.
Colorado
Gov. John Hickenlooper on CNN's State of the Union called the attack "a
form of terrorism" and said people need to be mindful of "inflammatory
rhetoric."
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.
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.
Nine
other people were hospitalized, including five officers. Cowart said
all 15 clinic employees survived and worked hard to make sure everyone
else got into safe spaces and stayed quiet.
Neighbors
who lived beside Dear's former South Carolina home say he hid food in
the woods as if he was a survivalist and said he lived off selling
prints of his uncle's paintings of Southern plantations and the Masters
golf tournament.
John Hood said Saturday that when he moved to Walterboro, South Carolina, Dear was living in a doublewide mobile home next door.
He pointed to a wooden fence separating their land and said he put it up because Dear liked to skinny dip.
Hood
said Dear rarely talked to him, and when he did, he tended to offer
unsolicited advice such as recommending that Hood put a metal roof on
his house so the U.S. government couldn't spy on him.
"He was really strange and out there, but I never thought he would do any harm," he said.
James
Russell, another former neighbor in a rural area of North Carolina
where Dear lived part time, said: "If you talked to him, nothing with
him was very cognitive."
