The man accused of killing three people and wounding nine others a decade ago in a mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs died from congestive heart failure and related medical conditions, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Robert Dear, 67, died Nov. 22 at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. In addition to heart failure, Dear had too much fluid in his body and low oxygen levels in his blood, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
Dear was accused of attacking the Planned Parenthood clinic on Nov. 27, 2015. Authorities believed he intended to wage “war” on the clinic because the staff performed abortions. He arrived armed with four SKS rifles, five handguns, two more rifles, a shotgun and more than 500 rounds of ammunition, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
More than two dozen people who were inside the clinic at the time hid until they could be rescued by law enforcement, according to prosecutors. Dear fired 198 rounds in the attack and tried to blow up propane tanks to take out police vehicles during a five-hour standoff.
Those killed were Ke’Arre Stewart, 29, Jennifer Markovsky, 36, and Garrett Swasey, 44, a campus police officer who responded to the clinic after hearing there was an active shooter.
Dear had been in state or federal custody since the 2015 attack and confessed to carrying out the mass shooting, but he was never convicted in the killings because he was always considered too mentally ill to go through the court process.
The federal case against him was dismissed after his death. The state case remained open Tuesday.
