A competency hearing on Thursday could help determine if the man accused of killing three people and injuring nine others during a shooting rampage at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs last year will stand trial.
This hearing is set to occur just weeks after Colorado court authorities released documents stating that Robert Lewis Dear Jr., 57, who has been held without bond since the November shooting, told police that he unsuccessfully tried to set off an explosion during the attack.
These documents also shed light on some of the comments Dear made after the shooting. In the arrest report and search warrants made public earlier this month, Dear is quoted by police as saying that he expected to go to heaven and “be met by all the aborted fetuses at the gates of heaven and they would thank him.”
Dear has already undergone a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, and according to earlier court filings from his attorneys, it found him to be incompetent. A judge must now weigh in to determine the next steps in the case.
Prosecutors say they plan to call a Colorado Springs detective and someone from a state mental health facility that evaluated Dear as witnesses during the hearing Thursday.
Dear’s public defenders hinted in one court filing at a reason for possibly delaying the conclusion of Thursday’s hearing. They said that they may ask for a continuance if a specific person — whose name has been redacted from public records — is needed to testify and unable to do so on Thursday.
Last November, police spent hours facing off with Dear at the Planned Parenthood clinic after being called about an active shooter there.
Police said Dear brought more than a half-dozen guns to the facility along with the propane tanks he intended to detonate. When officers responded to the scene, they said they were immediately fired upon, and Dear told later police that he knew he was shooting at them, according to police statements released earlier this month.
Five police officers were shot, and one officer – Garrett Swasey, 44, of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs campus police – died from his injuries. Two other people were killed: Ke’Arre Marcell Stewart, a 29-year-old Iraq War veteran and father of two; and Jennifer Markovsky, a 35-year-old mother of two who was at the clinic supporting a friend.
When Dear was interviewed by police after he was taken into custody, he told them he brought four SKS rifles with him inside the facility and had two handguns, a shotgun and rifle in his Toyota Tacoma outside. He told police that during the siege, he was wearing a “homemade ballistic vest . . . made of silver coins and duct tape,” one of the police statements said.
“As Robert Lewis Dear was being placed into a patrol car, he yelled out a statement about the killing of babies,” the report states.
Dear also told detectives that he had gone to the clinic “because he was upset with them performing abortions and the selling of baby parts,” according to the arrest report.
In his interviews with police, Dear said he had previously gone to a South Carolina abortion clinic and super-glued the locks shut to keep it closed for a day. He also told detectives he thinks President Obama is the “Antichrist” and, at various points, recited Bible verses.
Investigators also spoke with Dear’s girlfriend, who told them about Dear’s antiabortion views.
Police said Dear told detectives that he “thought very highly” of Paul Hill, a man who shot and killed a doctor who performed abortions – along with his body guard, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel – in 1994. A search of Dear’s email account showed that he had sent his son an email with the word “Hero” that included a link to a site about Hill, who was executed by the state of Florida in 2003.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Mark Berman
