Last Friday in Colorado Springs, Colorado, a gun battle in a Planned Parenthood clinic left three dead and nine wounded.
The standoff lasted more than five hours, during which officers exchanged fire with the gunman. One officer was killed in the shootout, 44-year-old Garrett Swasey, a six-year member of the University of Colorado campus police. The other two victims were civilians, 29-year-old Ke’Arre Stewart and 36-year-old Jennifer Markovsky.
Office Garrett Swasey, killed in last Friday’s shooting
Vicki Cowart, president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said the shooter “was motivated by opposition to safe and legal abortion.” Authorities have not confirmed a motive, but Mayor John Suthers told the Denver Post that “inferences [could be made] from where it took place,”
Since September, at least three Planned Parenthood clinics have been vandalized.
President Obama spoke out against the attacks in a statement on Saturday.
“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 for the last time,” Obama said. “And yet, two days after Thanksgiving, that’s what we are forced to do again.”
Colorado Springs Polic Lt. Catherine Buckley addresses media during the incident.
Obama called on policymakers to do something to prevent these kinds of shootings.
“This is not normal. We can’t let it become normal,” he said. “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 yielding them.”