Searching for Answers and for Comfort in Planned Parenthood Killings

By DAVE PHILIPPS and JACK HEALY

New York Times

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. >> After the congregation shared memories of a fallen police officer, Garrett Swasey, and cheered and cried through a grainy video of him competing at a 1992 skating championship, they bowed their heads on Sunday morning to pray for the man accused of killing him at a Planned Parenthood clinic.

“Does anyone know the name of this man who shot Garrett?” asked Scott Dontanville, a pastor at the Hope Chapel, where Swasey had been a church elder. Someone in the audience responded: Robert L. Dear Jr., 57, an isolated man who left a long trail of arrests and clashes with neighbors and others in his life.

“I pray for his soul, Lord, wherever he may be,” Dontanville said. “We forgive him. We can’t not.”

On Sunday, people across this shaken city gathered at services like this one, seeking answers and comfort three days after the five-hour siege at a Planned Parenthood clinic left three people dead, Swasey among them, and wounded nine. Two civilians killed in the shooting, Ke’Arre M. Stewart, a 29-year-old former soldier and Iraq war veteran, and Jennifer Markovsky, 36, a mother of two who was married to an Army veteran, were identified on Sunday by relatives.

The attack sparked a national debate over gun control and abortion, as supporters of Planned Parenthood described the shooting as domestic terrorism that had been fueled by anti-abortion comments, while some Republicans insisted that both sides needed to tone down their oratory.

The shootings have also been wrenching for this state, whose recent history of gun massacres and its narrow political divisions between Democrats and Republicans have made it a national battleground in the fight over gun control. And they have torn at the conservative heart of this city, where transplants from the South have recreated a small patch of the Bible Belt in the West.

Gun control and abortion are both unpopular in Colorado Springs, home to multiple military installations and Focus on the Family, a conservative organization. Anti-abortion protesters have gathered weekly outside the Planned Parenthood clinic — including the day of the shooting. But since Friday, the city has also seen an outpouring of support for the victims and condemnation of the violence.

Investigators are interviewing Dear’s friends, associates, and family members to determine whether he had ties to any extremist groups or if anyone helped him plot the attack, according to senior law enforcement officials. The authorities also want to know whether Dear told anyone about his intentions in recent weeks, the officials said. Among the people who have been interviewed is one of Dear’s girlfriends, the officials said.

But so far, the authorities have found no evidence that he had help from anyone, the officials said, and his motives remain unclear — although Dear had said “no more baby parts” in a rambling interview with the authorities after his arrest.

Throughout the day, elected officials from both parties weighed in on the meaning of the attack. Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, a Democrat, called the shooting a “form of terrorism” on CNN’s “State of the Union,” and urged the country to find ways “to make sure we keep guns out of the hands of people that are unstable.” Colorado has been the site of two other mass shootings, at Columbine High School in 1999 and at a movie theater in Aurora in 2012.

His views were echoed by Mayor John Suthers of Colorado Springs, a Republican, who said on ABC’s “This Week,” that the country needed to better identify people with “mental health problems and prevent their access to weapons.”

On the same program, Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas who heads the Homeland Security Committee, said “I do think we have to address mental health.” But he also suggested that new laws might not be needed, saying, “I think we also need to enforce existing law,” and noting that under current law some people with mental illnesses cannot own fire arms.

Also appearing on “This Week,” Vicki Cowart, the president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains, said that extremist anti-abortion opinions encouraged the violence. “We’ve experienced so much hateful language, hateful speech. Such a negative environment has been created the work that Planned Parenthood does, around the idea of safe and legal abortion,” she said. “I can’t believe that this isn’t contributing to some folks, mentally unwell or not, thinking that it’s OK.”

But some Republicans rejected her assertion.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Carly Fiorina, a Republican presidential candidate, said blaming the rhetoric on opponents of abortion was “demonizing the messenger.” Another Republican candidate, Ben Carson, appearing on “This Week,” said he considered the shooting a hate crime but also said there was too much inflammatory language on both sides.

“What we really have to start asking ourselves is what can we do as a nation to rectify the situation,” Carson said.

In Colorado Springs, the focus fell more on neighbors who died than on those broader questions.

At Hope Chapel, an evangelical church, worshippers cried as they remembered how Swasey had played guitar during Sunday services and led care groups. They laughed at how he affectionately called his friends “knuckleheads” and they tried to see his death through a broader Christian frame of sin and sacrifice.

“As we mourn today, we can have a different perspective of hope,” said Kurt Aichele, a close friend and fellow church elder.

A stool where Swasey played electric guitar in the church band was empty. “He had his hands in a lot of lives,” said Sarah Dontanville, Dontanville’s wife.

The night before, hundreds of friends, students and fellow law enforcement officers gathered for a candle vigil, singing Amazing Grace.

Since Friday, more than $75,000 has been raised on the crowdfunding site YouCaring to start an education fund for his children.

Dontanville, facing about 80 worshippers on Sunday morning, said he had been shopping with his wife when he got a call from a friend saying that Swasey had been killed in the shooting. “No, it’s not him,” he said he told himself.

Swasey had been at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, but friends said he regularly helped to answer calls off-campus, and he was one of scores of police officers who rushed to the Planned Parenthood center when gunshots erupted around noon on Friday.

Since Swasey’s death, members of the congregation said they have been working to set raise money for his wife and two children, but also to come to grips with his killing. Dontanville said that for some, it had awakened feelings of confusion and frustration with God.

“Why didn’t God do something, where was he?” Dontanville asked during the service.

At New Life Church, a stadium-like megachurch on the north side of the city that will host Swasey’s memorial later this week, hundreds of worshippers filled the seats Sunday morning, waving their arms to devotional rock music as colored lights flowed over the crowd.

“We all know what went down in our city Friday and we need to pray,” Daniel Grothe, one of the church’s pastors, told the congregation.

The church had been the scene of a shooting in 2007 in which two people were killed and others were wounded. The pastor made no mention of abortion politics but instead called for unity.

“There are people that are sad today people who are hurting,” Grothe said. “We need to pray for the peace of God in our city.” After the service, parishioners expressed sympathy and support for Planned Parenthood even though some of its practices go against their beliefs. One woman said she went to a vigil for the victims even though she considered the organization an adversary.

“We love all life no matter at what stage,” said Elle Tonkins on Sunday outside the church. “There are times when Planned Parenthood doesn’t align with our beliefs. But that does not mean we should pick up a gun. That is not us.”

She disagreed that sharp criticism of Planned Parenthood may have contributed to the violence. “There are a lot of people who don’t agree about it but you don’t see them getting violent. This isn’t about being pro-life, it’s about a man who obviously had some very serious mental health issues.”

At St. Paul Catholic Church in the well-heeled Broadmoor neighborhood, the Rev. Msgr. Robert Jaeger did not directly mention the shooting in his homily, and during Mass offered prayers without referring to Planned Parenthood by name, instead saying “those that lost their lives on Centennial Boulevard.”

After Mass, he said he knew the congregation would have the shooting on its mind when they heard his homily, and left out the details partly because there were so many children present.