Planned Parenthood shooter described as a ‘loner’

The suspect accused of opening fire on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado on Friday has been described as a loner with few political or religious leanings, according to The Associated Press.

57-year-old Robert Lewis Dear left three dead, including one police officer, and nine others injured after a five-hour siege on the clinic.

{mosads}”If you talked to him, nothing with him was very cognitive — topics all over place,” said James Russell, a neighbor who lives a few hundred feet from Dear’s shack in Black Mountain, N.C. Russell said Dear often avoided eye contact.

Authorities have refused to discuss a possible motive for the shooting, but Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers said people can make “inferences from where it took place.”

He suggested Dear’s mental health is part of the investigation of the shooting. Neighbors say they have never heard Dear talk about abortion, AP is reporting.

Russell and others said the only companion Dear has been sighted with is a mangy dog that several neighbors say caused them to call animal control out of fear he was abusing it.

A cross made of twigs hangs on the door of Dear’s cabin, which is situated half a mile down a winding dirt road near Asheville, N.C. The cabin has no running water or electricity.

Dear also had an address in Hartsel, Colo., about 60 miles from the site of the shooting in Colorado Springs.

Residents say while he was sometimes seen at the post office and he mostly kept to himself.

Dear has several previous run-ins with law enforcement, AP reported. In 1997, his then-wife reported that he hit her and pushed her out of a window. A Peeping Tom charge brought by a neighbor was dropped a month after it was filed. Police also went to his home after a neighbor’s dog was shot with a pellet gun.

Witnesses report that victims in the clinic holed up inside when the shooting began. Some were able to escape.

Ozy Licano was in the parking lot shortly after the assault began, when the shooter came out of the clinic.

“He came out, and we looked each other in the eye, and he started aiming, and then he started shooting,” Licano said. “I saw two holes go right through my windshield as I was trying to quickly back up and he just kept shooting and I started bleeding.”

“He was aiming for my head,” Licano said. “It’s just weird to stare in the face of someone like that. And he didn’t win.”