UPDATE: THE shooter, 59 year old Robert Lewis Deer is said to be from South Carolina.
The young officer who was murdered is UCCS police officer Garrett Swasey, 44, father and husband. He responded in support of Colorado Springs Police to the active shooter situation at about 11:50 a.m. Friday. UCCS officers are sworn, state-certified police officers. Officer Swasey was on duty at the campus and responded in support of Colorado Springs Police. He was a six-year veteran at the UCCS Police Department.
The names of the two other persons who were killed have not yet been released.
The Federal Government noted today that the Planned Parenthood locales have been on high alert for weeks now. More to follow as facts come in.
Update: Three persons have been killed, one police officer, two civilians.
UPDATE: It is said by Colorado Attorney General, that two persons are dead from the shooting at the facility.
UPDATE: Here is a picture of the alleged shooter:
UPDATE: The shooter has been taken into custody alive. It is said there are 11 persons at hospital, five of them police officers.
There are many witness stories flying, mainly in terms of being frightened so, and also those who received phone calls from their loved ones at the/near the site, saying help!, and also as one woman told her horribly distraught brother, ‘Take care of my kids if I die today.’
Earlier:
Just some vignettes: I’m about 40 miles from the scene: It is cold as a sub zero freezer here, with snow flying sideways, and fog gray sky heavy with snow, as dusk is falling fast here at 4:39 pm on this day, Friday. And it is COLD. Snowy, slippery, ice everywhere.
40 miles to the south a still active shooter, said to be a white man with a long barreled weapon [and items that may be explosives] is still at large in an area where there are small restaurants, bank and grocery store, that also includes a planned parenthood clinic.
9 persons, including 4 [possibly 5] police officers are said to now have been taken to Penrose hospital which is the central hospital at Colorado Springs, but also to the VA hospital.
The shooter is still active and said to be holed up in the Planned Parenthood offices. His onslaught is in its 4th hour. The incident began at planned parenthood building, with some being able to flee to a nearby bank. It is one suspect. Oddly some on social media is naming the suspect, but the police have not been able to make contact with the suspect, so thus far his name is unknown. There is much speculation that the man is ‘trained’ and has shot civilians as they were running away.
Shoppers are being quarantined in a grocery store and stable with officers’ protection.
A bit of background on Colorado Springs: C.Springs, as it is sometimes called, is the home of the soaring US Air Force Academy, and NORAD which is under Cheyenne Mountain, and military base from which F-16s were launched re 9-11, and again recently there were the thundering flyovers right after the Paris slaughter of innocents.
Up until not so long ago, C.Springs was a peaceful town of many working class persons who ran the mills, outlying farmers, food suppliers, students at the colleges there, a grand boulevard of the homes of the wealthy from the 19th and 20th century mining magnates, and of course the enlisted military community.
James Dobson with his ultraconservative ‘Focus on the Family’ chose Colorado Springs to buy up huge swaths of land and building towering brick buildings and huge megachurches, dominating Colorado Springs for the last few decades.
Colorado Springs is also well known as ‘ground zero’ for being the first of several states that Dobson and cohort tried to change the constitutions of, to outlaw equal rights for gay people. In 1992 Colorado suddenly had a voters’ initiative, to make an amendment to its Constitution to strip gay people of equal rights–the initiative was mounted by Dobson and his cohort, whose weekly/daily preaching is often dedicated to principles of not allowing women to make choices about their bodies, actively attempting to block equal rights for an entire class of human beings GLBT persons, and also moving strongly, even though a non-profit is forbade by the US government tax laws from lobbying politically– to make notable public efforts to influence elections at local, state and federal levels.
Dobson and Will Perkin’s 1992 amendment to the Colorado constitution was overthrown by the higher court as being ‘unconstitutional.’ Their forays to other states also failed.
After decades of dominating Focus on the Family, [and after the sad saga of one of Dobson’s prime mentees being groomed as a charismatic minister under Dobson, said mentee being exposed for having drugged sex with homosexual men while being a married man with 5 children and a huge congregation of followers who were shocked and betrayed….] James Dobson now 79 years old, ‘moved away’ as head of his own org, ” Dobson explained his sudden departure in 2009 as a result of “significant philosophical differences” with successor” Jim Daly…
Dobson still broadcasts daily on a local radio station. He has called President Obama, the abortion president. At a National Day of Prayer event in the U.S. Capitol, Dobson called Barack Obama “the abortion president.” He said, “President Obama, before he was elected, made it very clear that he wanted to be the abortion president. He didn’t make any bones about it. This is something that he really was going to promote and support, and he has done that, and in a sense he is the abortion president.”
