Robert L. Dear: Colorado Springs Police ID Alleged Shooter

Robert L. Dear. Source: Colorado Springs Police Department.

This is Robert L. Dear, the alleged mass shooter at  a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs yesterday. He is suspected of murdering officer Garrett Swasey of the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) Police Department. He also is suspected of shooting 12 people in total, killing Swasey and two others.

President Obama said this morning that the incident terrorized an entire community.

Here is the President’s statement (italics added):

The last thing Americans should have to do, over the holidays or any day, is comfort the families of people killed by gun violence — people who woke up in the morning and bid their loved ones goodbye with no idea it would be for the last time.

And yet, two days after Thanksgiving, that’s what we are forced to do again.

We don’t yet know what this particular gunman’s so-called motive was for shooting twelve people, or for terrorizing an entire community, when he opened fire with an assault weapon and took hostages at a Planned Parenthood center in Colorado. What we do know is that he killed a cop in the line of duty, along with two of the citizens that police officer was trying to protect.  We know that law enforcement saved lives, as so many of them do every day, all across America.  And we know that more Americans and their families had fear forced upon them.

This is not normal.  We can’t let it become normal.  If we truly care about this — if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience — then 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.

May God bless Officer Garrett Swasey and the Americans he tried to save — and may He grant the rest of us the courage to do the same thing.

Swasey was 44, a six-year veteran of the campus police department. He was assisting the Colorado Springs Police Department, the university said.

CNN interviewed a witness who’d allegedly encountered Dear while the murderous event unfolded.

From CNN (italics added):

“Five seconds we stared right at each other … and in those five seconds, bullet holes passed through my window,” he said.

“He was looking directly at my face; he was aiming at my head. I could see it in his eyes … cold stone face.”

As the bullets ripped through his windshield, he started bleeding in the mouth and face, and assumed he’d been shot. He sped out of the parking lot.

It can be a small world. The PP Blog previously has written about John Suthers, Colorado’s former Attorney General and the one-time U.S.Attorney for the state. Suthers now is the mayor of Colorado Springs, meaning he is the local comforter-in-chief when there is a community-wide tragedy.

There was fear yesterday that Dear might have brought explosive devices with him.

Here’s what Suthers’ office says today, via Twitter:

#CentennialBlShooting #CSPD confirms Items brought to scene by suspect have been secured & processed. Items no longer a threat.

— COSpringsMayor (@COSpringsMayor) November 28, 2015