Spotlight: Three killed in gunshot in U.S., highlighting persistent gun violence

Three people were shot dead and nine others were injured in a shooting on Friday in the city of Colorado Springs in the western U.S. state of Colorado, once again highlighting America's gun culture and persistent gun violence.

Robert Dear, 59, a South Carolina native and son of a U.S. navy veteran, surrendered to police.

Colorado Springs Police Chief Peter Carey told reporters about an hour after the suspect was captured, saying that all nine surviving victims -- five police officers and four civilians -- were in good condition at area hospitals.

Witness said Dear was seen "talking to himself" and brandishing a shotgun and automatic rifle, after parking his car and walking into the clinic at around noon.

During the dramatic standoff and shootout, police deployed an armored vehicle to crash through the walls of the clinic to free people trapped inside, according to witnesses, who said the shooter surrendered after a policeman shouted for him to stop.

Police were also investigating several unidentified bags for explosives brought by Dear inside and to the front of the building, Colorado Springs Police Department Lt. Catherine Buckley said.

The officer killed was 44-year-old Garrett Swasey, a father of two children and former ice-skating national champion, who worked for the University of Colorado's Colorado Springs campus 10 miles (16 km) away, according to a statement released by the university.

He went to the scene "in support of an officer under fire," the statement said.

"We don't yet know if Planned Parenthood was in fact the target of this attack," Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said in a statement.

Colorado Springs Police spokeswoman Lt. Catherine Buckley told local media that later in the afternoon, officers were able to get close enough to the suspect who holed up in the clinic of Colorado Springs' branch of Planned Parenthood and exchanged gunfire with police. At that point, officers were able to get him to surrender.

The suspect, a white man, was seen escorted by police out of the clinic in handcuffs just before 5:00 p.m. local time (2400 GMT).

The identity and motive of the suspect are not revealed yet. But police believed he acted alone.

About 150 police officers from the city and the state police departments were sent to the scene after gun shots were reported at around 11:30 a.m. (1830 GMT).

The suspect first engaged in a gun battle with police but ultimately surrendered to officers inside the Planned Parenthood building. The violence played out under a steady snowfall in Colorado's second-largest city.

More than a dozen police vehicles and ambulances were seen at the scene. SWAT members managed to evacuate some 20 people from the clinic before the suspect surrendered.

Television footage showed a number of clinic staff and patients being escorted safely into police vehicles from the building, which lies on the northwest side of Colorado Springs, about 112 km south of Denver.

Police declined to discuss the gunman's motivations. But Vicki Cowart,the president of the Rocky Mountains chapter of Planned Parenthood, suggested a climate of rancor surrounding abortion in the United States sets the stage for such violence, according to reports.

Planned Parenthood, a 99-year-old organization that provides contraceptive, planning and abortions to about 325,000 women a year, has been the target of anti-abortion extremists for 40 years.

The abortion issue is again causing national interest after an August article in the Washington Post revealed that tissue from aborted fetuses is routinely removed for research by women who work in the clinics.

The Post article caused reaction from Congress, with a number of anti-abortion politicians recently threatening again to introduce legislation banning the procedure and the use of fetal tissue in experiments.

"We share the concerns of many Americans that extremists are creating a poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism in this country," Cowart said.

The United States has experienced rampant incidents of mass shooting around the country over past years.

The latest previous shooting happened at the Northern Arizona University's Flagstaff campus on Oct. 9, leading to one person killed and three others injured after a fight turned violent between two groups of students.

The suspected shooter was identified as an 18-year-old freshman at the school, who opened fire with a handgun on other students.

On Oct. 1, another shooting rampage just happened at Umpqua Community College in southern Oregon, which left at least 10 dead, 20 others wounded.

Two pistols, four rifles and a shotgun were found at the 26-year-old gunman Christopher Harper-Mercer's apartment after he died during his confrontation with officers at the scene.

Colorado Springs was also the scene of a mass shooting on Oct. 31 in which a gunman killed three people near downtown before dying in a shootout with police.

On July 20, 2012, 25-year-old James Holmes, brandishing three weapons and dressed from head-to-toe in body armor, walked through the exit door of the Century 16 Theater in Aurora in Colorado, which was showing the midnight premier of "The Dark Knight Rises," and unleashed hundreds of bullets into the unsuspecting audience.

Stiffer gun control by the U.S. government has been a long-term debate in the U.S. political circles. Especially the rampant shooting cases on campus, a supposedly safe harbor for students, have raised people's outcry.

For a long time, mass shooting has already become a banal fact in the United States. According to shootingtracker.com, a website dedicated to tracking gun violence in the country, there were 283 shooting incidents in the United States in 2014, in which four or more people were shot. In the first five months of 2015, the number of mass shootings has already reached 119.

However, following the 2012 school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, which claimed 28 lives, including 20 children, the administration of President Barack Obama initiated but failed to push stronger gun control laws.

"We have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths," said Obama in his 15th televised speech on mass shooting in the United States since taking office. Endi