Suspect surrenders following shootings at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs

Washington Post

A suspect is in police custody following an hours-long ordeal at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo., where at least five police officers and six civilians were injured in a shooting Friday.

“The perpetrator is in custody,” Mayor John Suthers declared just after 5 p.m. local time — more than five hours after an active shooter was first reported at the health-care clinic.

Police were still trying to determine the gunman’s identity — and his motive — following his capture at the clinic.  

“At this point, I have as many questions as you do,” Colorado Springs Police Chief Pete Carey said.

Very little information was available about what transpired at the health center, where the suspect — armed with a long gun — was holed up for hours and gunshots were still audible as police used an armored vehicle to evacuate people from the building.

“The situation has been resolved,” Suthers told reporters. “There is no continuing peril to the citizens of Colorado Springs, but there’s a huge crime scene that has to be processed.”

Before the gunman’s capture, local businesses were on lockdown as officials with Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains expressed concern about patients and staff at the facility.

“Our top priority is the safety of our patients and staff,” Vicki Cowart, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to everyone involved in this tragic situation.”

Cowart added that “the full circumstances and motives behind this criminal action” are not yet known — “and we don’t yet know if Planned Parenthood was in fact the target of this attack.”

Police said the incident began at the Planned Parenthood building shortly after 11:30 a.m. local time.

Though authorities have not determined a motive for the shooting, health centers associated with Planned Parenthood have often been the target of threats and violence. Abortion rights groups say threats against abortion providers have spiked this summer in the wake of an undercover sting mounted by an anti-abortion group purporting to prove that Planned Parenthood sells leftover tissue from abortions for a profit.

“We don’t have anything about this individual’s mentality, or his ideas or his ideology,” Colorado Springs Police Lt. Catherine Buckley told reporters as the shooter continued to exchange gunfire with police.

Police described the gunman as a stocky, bearded white male wearing a trench coat.

Buckley said at a news conference that officers inside the Planned Parenthood building shouted to make contact with the suspect. At that point, she said, “they were able to get him to surrender” and he was taken into custody just before 5 p.m. in Colorado Springs.

Police did not say whether the suspect was shot.

President Obama was briefed on the situation, a White House official said. Local police were joined at the scene by state investigators and federal agents from both the ATF and FBI.

At least 11 people were transported from the scene to local hospitals, officials said. Their conditions were not known, and no fatalities were reported at the time of the suspect’s capture.

“This is a horrible tragedy for our community,” District Attorney Dan May said at a news conference with the mayor and law enforcement officials. But, May added: “It was amazing how law enforcement and first responders came together.”

Police said an active shooter was reported at 11:38 a.m. Mountain time. The first 911 call, police said, came from the Planned Parenthood health center on Centennial Boulevard.

The health center sits in a bustling area near a shopping center, a medical building, a gas station and restaurants. A burst of gunfire early on in the ordeal gave way to relative calm in the afternoon, but witnesses said the gunfire started up again later in the afternoon.

Sydney Downey, 20, who works at Sally Beauty Supply nearby, told The Washington Post that people inside the store began to hear gunshots at about 11:45 a.m.

“A lot of gunshots,” Downey said, “like too many to even count.”

She added: “Now police are running up and down Centennial.”

Downey said police and firefighters swarmed Centennial Boulevard and crowded around a nearby bank.

An officer came by the beauty supply store to make sure the doors were locked and that those inside were safe, she said.

“He said, ‘Get back away from the windows’ and left, and that was it,” Downey said.

Since then, Downey said, she has been huddled in a back room with the store manager and a customer.

When asked about reports that someone had shot at propane tanks, Buckley, the police spokeswoman, said the gunman had brought several items with him into the clinic — some of which were still inside the building and some of which were in front of it.  But, she said, authorities had not yet determined what the items are or whether they were “devices.”

The incident comes as Planned Parenthood is facing unprecedented scrutiny following the undercover video operation mounted by a little-known group, the Center for Medical Progress. The anti-abortion organization spent 30 months infiltrating Planned Parenthood clinics and gatherings in an effort to produce evidence that the women’s health nonprofit was selling tissue leftover from abortions, which is against federal law.

Planned Parenthood has called the videos deceptively edited, and said emphatically that it has not violated any laws. Among the clinics targeted as part of the video project was one in Denver.

Though the videos do not prove that Planned Parenthood violated any laws, the frank and at times lighthearted discussions captured by the anti-abortion activists provided fodder for opponents of the procedure on Capitol Hill, who have mounted multiple investigations into the organization’s practices.

Some Republican governors have attempted to cut off Medicaid and grants to the group.

Abortion-rights advocates say the videos have led to a spike in threats against abortion providers, particularly Planned Parenthood; at least four affiliateshave been targeted in arson attacks since the videos emerged.

As the situation in Colorado Springs was unfolding Friday, the New York City Police Department said that “as a precautionary measure,” it had “redeployed Critical Response Vehicles to Planned Parenthood locations throughout the city.” The NYPD added that in a statement that “there are currently NO specific threats to any New York City locations at this time.”

Joan Motolinia told reporters that his sister was at the clinic in Colorado Springs for an appointment when the gunman opened fire. He was on the phone with her, he said, and “she said there was some guy shooting. I want to know that she’s okay because she hung up on me.”

Motolinia said he could hear the gunshots over the phone.

“She was telling me to take care of her babies because she could get killed,” he said.

Brigitte Wolfe, who works at a Japanese restaurant across the street from the clinic, said that she first learned something was amiss when police SWAT and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives vehicles pulled up out front. She heard no gunshots.

“We just thought it was some random whatever happening, and then we turned on the news and started seeing what was going on,’’ she told The Post.

Suddenly, she said, police and ATF agents banged on the restaurant’s door “and told us to hide where there was no windows because the shooter was active.”

“We’ve been on lockdown since then,” said Wolfe, speaking from the restaurant’s kitchen, where she was hiding with seven employees and several customers. She said police and federal agents had commandeered the restaurant’s dining room.

“We have these massive windows, so if there is an active shooting going on, I think they might try to shoot him through our windows,’’ she said.

Wolfe added that the Planned Parenthood clinic has been the scene of protests most weekends but never any violence until Friday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/11/27/active-shooter-at-planned-parenthood-in-colorado-springs-police-and-fire-officials-say/