Police name suspect in rampage at Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic

Scant details emerged on Saturday on the suspect in a deadly shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, Robert Lewis Dear, 57, and police were so far not discussing a possible motive.

Police identified Dear as the man arrested in Friday's rampage at the Colorado Springs clinic but gave little other information.
 
Court records showed he was once charged with being a "peeping Tom" in his native South Carolina.
 
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.
 
After a standoff lasting several hours, he surrendered to law enforcement officers, authorities said.
 
Dear was being held without bail and was scheduled for a preliminary court hearing on Monday, jail records said. His police booking photograph showed a burly man with a white beard.
 
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.
 

Saturday, November 28, 2015 Robert L. Dear is seen in an undated picture released by the Colorado Springs (Colorado) Police Department November 28, 2015. Reuters

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 rancour 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.

Police said Dear most recently lived in Hartsel, Colorado, a community of a few hundred people, about 60 miles (100 km) west of Colorado Springs, the state's second largest city.

He was born in South Carolina and was married in 1995 in Colleton County, public records show.

In 2002 he was accused of eavesdropping or peeping to invade someone's privacy. Court records show the charge was dismissed, but a judge issued a restraining order against him related to the case.

In Friday's shooting, the assailant entered the clinic and opened fire with a rifle, authorities said.

Police pursued the man into the building, trading gunfire with the suspect as authorities tracked his movements by watching video feeds from security cameras mounted inside.

Saturday, November 28, 2015 Two women are evacuated from a building where a shooter was suspected to be still holed up in Colorado Springs, Colorado, November 27, 2015, during a snowstorm. Reuters

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, including a 2012 massacre at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado, that have galvanised supporters of tighter gun control.

It is a polarising issue in the United States, where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution.

Expressing frustration, 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 on Saturday.

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, was a former figure skater who served as an elder at Hope Chapel, the Colorado Springs church said on its website.

Saturday, November 28, 2015 Ambulances wait on a road leading to a Planned Parenthood center after reports of an active shooter in Colorado Springs, November 27, 2015. Reuters

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 organisation.

At least eight workers at clinics providing abortions have been killed since 1977, according to the National Abortion Federation - most recently in 2009, when Dr 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 conservativ​​e Christian groups such as Focus on the Family that oppose abortion.

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