Suspect Named in Rampage at Colorado Planned Parenthood Clinic

Colorado Springs, Colo.: Police named the suspect in a deadly shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs as 57-year-old Robert L. Dear on Saturday, but they released few other details about the man and said nothing about what may have motivated the rampage.

The gunman stormed the clinic, which provides a range of health services including abortions, killing three people, including a police officer, and wounding nine others on Friday. After a standoff at the center lasting several hours, he surrendered to law enforcement officers, authorities said.

Police said Dear resided in Hartsel, about 65 miles (105 km) west of Colorado Springs, the state's second largest city. His police booking photograph showed a burly man with a white beard.

Dear was being held without bail and was scheduled for a preliminary court hearing on Monday, jail records said.

Friday's shooting was believed to be the first fatal attack at an abortion provider in the United States in six years. Police have not discussed the suspect's motives.

The clinic in Colorado Springs has been repeatedly targeted for protests by anti-abortion activists.

"We don't yet know the full circumstances and motives behind this criminal action, and we don't yet know if Planned Parenthood was in fact the target of this attack," said Vicki Cowart, chief executive of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.

However, she suggested a climate of rancor surrounding abortion had set the stage for such violence. "We share the concerns of many Americans that extremists are creating a poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism in this country," she said in a statement.

The assailant was armed with a rifle when he entered the clinic and opened fire around noon on Friday, authorities said.

Police pursued the man into the building, trading gunfire with the suspect as authorities tracked their movements from room to room by watching live video feeds from security cameras mounted inside. Police said officers managed to talk the gunman into giving himself up and he was taken into custody more than five hours after the violence began.

Those killed were a police officer and two civilians. All nine surviving victims - five police officers and four civilians - were listed in good condition at area hospitals.

The attack was the latest in a series of mass shootings around the country. In Colorado, 12 people were killed in a 2012 massacre at a movie theater in Aurora.

Expressing frustration over the latest gun violence, President Barack Obama said the United States needs make it harder for criminals and the mentally unstable to get guns, a theme that he has sounded repeatedly.

"We have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them. Period. Enough is enough," Obama said in a statement.

Items Left on Scene 'No Longer a Threat'

The dead policeman was Garrett Swasey, 44, a campus police officer for the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs who joined city police in responding to the first reports of shots fired, authorities said. The dead civilians were not named.

Swasey, married and the father of two young children, served as an elder at Hope Chapel, the Colorado Springs church said on its website.

A Boston native, he moved to Colorado Springs in the early 1990s to train at the Olympic Training Center as a champion ice dancer, before retiring from the sport and moving into law enforcement, the statement said.

Planned Parenthood in recent years moved its Colorado Springs clinic to new quarters on the city's northwest side - a facility that opponents of abortion had called a "fortress."

The national non-profit group, devoted to providing a range of reproductive health services, including abortions, has come under renewed pressure this year from conservatives in Congress seeking to cut off federal funding for the organization.

At least eight workers at clinics providing abortions have been killed since 1977, according to the National Abortion Federation - most recently in 2009, when doctor George Tiller was shot to death at church in Wichita, Kansas.

Clinics have reported nearly 7,000 incidents of trespassing, vandalism, arson, death threats, and other forms of violence since then, according to the federation.

As in much of the rest of the country, abortion is a divisive issue in Colorado. Colorado Springs is a hub for conservative Christian groups such as Focus on the Family that oppose abortion.

The issue figured prominently in attack ads during last year's U.S. Senate race between incumbent Democrat Mark Udall and Republican challenger Cory Gardner, who won the election.