COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., (Reuters) – Police arrested a gunman who stormed a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Colorado Springs yesterday and opened fire with a rifle in an attack that left three people dead and nine others injured, authorities said.
The dead included one police officer and two civilians, Colorado Springs Police Chief Peter Carey told reporters about an hour after the suspect had been captured.
All nine surviving victims – five police officers and four civilians – were listed in good condition at area hospitals, Carney said.
The suspect first engaged in a protracted gun battle with police but ultimately surrendered to officers inside the building about five hours after the start of the violence, which played out under a steady snowfall in Colorado’s second-largest city.
A Reuters photographer at the scene saw a man in a white T-shirt, with his hands cuffed behind his back, being taken out of an armored police vehicle and placed in an unmarked squad car. Authorities said they did not know the suspect’s identity but believed he acted alone.
The slain lawman was 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 Colorado Springs clinic has been the target of repeated protests by anti-abortion activists, and in recent years moved to new quarters on the city’s northwest side – a facility derided as a “fortress” by critics of Planned Parenthood.
The national non-profit group, devoted to providing a range of reproductive health services, including abortions, has come under renewed pressure in recent months from conservatives in Congress seeking to cut off federal support for the organization.
A police spokeswoman, Lieute-nant Catherine Buckley, said it took officers a number of hours to establish communication with the suspect before he gave himself up.
“We did get officers inside the building. They were able to shout to the suspect and make communication with him and at that point they were able to get him to surrender and he was taken into custody,” Buckley said.
An hour earlier, police said progress in securing the building was slowed by the fact that the gunman brought “some bags” with him into the clinic and left several items outside, all of which needed to be checked for possible booby traps or explosives.
After the arrest, Buckley said it would take hours more, and perhaps days, for investigators to fully process the crime scene.
Police swarmed the area around the building after an emergency call reporting shots fired at about 11:30 a.m. Mountain Time (1830 GMT), and officers ultimately confronted the suspect inside the building, Buckley said.
Television footage aired by CNN showed a number of clinic staff and patients being escorted safely into police vehicles from the building, which lies on the northwest side of Colorado Springs, about 70 miles (112 km) south of Denver.
The FBI and agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were assisting local law enforcement investigators.