"No more baby parts"--this is what the Colorado Planned Parenthood shooter is claimed to have said at the height of the siege, reports Washington Post.
The suspect has already been identified as Robert Lewis Dear Jr., who's described as a drifter, having been in the area for a short while, and with a number of criminal records. On Friday, Nov 27, he stormed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. He kept the staff and patients hostage for more than four hours before he surrendered and taken into custody. At least three people are dead, including a Colorado university police officer who supported a police under fire.
Until now, it's unclear what pushed Dear Jr. to commit the crime, although Washington Post cited a source, an official from law enforcement, who said that the suspect had uttered the name of Obama and the quote. This may seem to suggest that the crime was politically motivated, the source allegedly believes. Earlier on, the president for Planned Parenthood in the Rocky Mountains, Vicki Cowart, had issued a statement, saying that it was part of "domestic terrorism," creating a toxic environment. Eyewitness accounts she has gathered tends to corroborate the assumption of the article source. Different pro-life or anti-abortion groups have already denied any hand on the crime and that they categorically denied that the suspect is part of their organization.
Planned Parenthood, an organization that offers reproductive health services to women including legal abortion, has been a subject of a growing controversy surrounding its supposed sale of fetal tissues for research to laboratories, based on a series of released videos by Center for Medical Progress. Since the release, Planned Parenthood has claimed that the videos were heavily edited.
The organization is not immune to attacks especially from "conservatists" and pro-life activists. In 1998, Eric Rudolph bombed two clinics in Atlanta, Georgia, and Alabama. Early this year, arson caused a major damage in a clinic in Spokane, Washington.