In this day, it does not take long to gather an array of information about someone. In the case of Robert L. Dear, Jr., much of it sounds like someone with mental issues.
It was just Friday afternoon that Dear barricaded himself in the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs and during some five hours killed three people, a police officer, a military veteran of Iraq and a single mother, and wounded several others.
Dear was living in an isolated trailer in South Park, the western edge of which is marked by U.S. Highway 285, a long open expanse to Fairplay and beyond which Durangoans who drive to Denver know well. (Highway 24 would have taken Dear directly into Colorado Springs.) He had moved to Colorado about a year ago from a small rural community in North Carolina. Early reports are that he had limited contact with his few far-flung neighbors. In North Carolina he left behind a divorce, a minor assault against his former wife, a dispute with a neighbor over a dog and another small house, this one with no running water. Dear apparently made some money by reproducing and selling artists’ work.
While Dear is reported to have said a few words about “no more baby parts,” we do not yet know fully why the attack took place at Planned Parenthood.
A narrative of the terrifying five hours is certain to include details about the defensive equipment and procedures that Planned Parenthood had in place in its Colorado Springs location, and most certainly in facilities elsewhere. Police have already said that the building’s video-monitoring system allowed them to know where staff and clients had taken cover and to show them a way out, and perhaps to follow most of Dear’s movements.
That those systems, in addition to physical barriers, exist in clinics is because Planned Parenthood’s critics deliver constant threats of violence that must be taken seriously. History has proved again that those threats can materialize.
And, of course, there will be great interest in how Dear acquired the weapon he used, and if it is shown that he was incapacitated mentally, whether he should and could have been prevented from having it. It is very likely that there will be no certainty about that. Mental issues come at different times and in varying intensities.
Our hearts go out to the families of those who lost their loved ones in the violence in Colorado Springs on Friday, and to those who were wounded, and hope that there can be some resolution that gives justice to all and makes for a safer world, if even slightly.
