By CHRISTOPHER WEBER and JAIMIE DING, Related Press
LOS ANGELES — Investigators on Monday had been combing by way of the writings of a 25-year-old man believed chargeable for an explosion that ripped by way of a Southern California fertility clinic over the weekend.
The FBI recognized Man Edward Bartkus because the suspect within the obvious automotive bomb detonation Saturday that broken the American Reproductive Facilities constructing in Palm Springs, east of Los Angeles. Bartkus died within the explosion. Not one of the facility’s embryos had been broken.
Authorities referred to as the assault terrorism and mentioned Bartkus left behind nihilistic writings that indicated views towards procreation, an concept generally known as anti-natalism.
Right here’s what to know concerning the case.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene
The blast gutted the clinic and shattered the home windows of close by buildings alongside a palm tree-lined road. Passersby described a loud increase, with folks screaming in terror and glass strewn alongside sidewalks of the upscale desert metropolis.
Bartkus’ physique was discovered close to a charred automobile.
Akil Davis, the assistant director in command of the FBI’s Los Angeles discipline workplace, referred to as it probably the “largest bombing scene that we’ve had in Southern California.”
The ability was closed for the day.
“This was a targeted attack against the IVF facility,” Davis mentioned Sunday. “Make no mistake: We are treating this, as I said yesterday, as an intentional act of terrorism.”
The investigation is ongoing
Authorities executed a search warrant in Bartkus’ hometown of Twentynine Palms, a metropolis of 28,000 residents northeast of Palm Springs with a big U.S. Marine Corps base.
Bartkus tried to livestream the explosion, however the try failed, the FBI mentioned.
Authorities haven’t shared specifics concerning the explosives used to make the bomb and the place Bartkus might have obtained them.
Scott Sweetow, a retired ATF explosives skilled, mentioned the quantity of injury triggered indicated that the suspect used a “high explosive” much like dynamite and TNT slightly than a “low explosive” like gun powder.
These varieties of explosives are usually troublesome for civilians to entry, however more and more individuals are discovering methods to concoct explosives at dwelling, he mentioned.
“Once you know the chemistry involved, it’s pretty easy to get stuff,” Sweetow mentioned. “The ingredients you could get at a grocery store.”
The photographs of the aftermath additionally confirmed that the explosion appeared to blow from the road straight by way of the constructing and to the car parking zone on the opposite aspect, one thing that would have been intentional or pure luck, Sweetow mentioned. Part of the automotive was additionally blown by way of the constructing and landed within the again by a dumpster.
What had been the suspect’s views?
Authorities are working to study extra about Bartkus’ motives. They haven’t mentioned if he meant to kill himself within the assault or why he selected the particular facility.
His writings communicated “nihilistic ideations” that had been nonetheless being examined to find out his way of thinking, mentioned U.S. Legal professional Invoice Essayli, the highest federal prosecutor within the space. Generally, nihilism means that life is meaningless.
He appeared to carry anti-natalist views, which embody a perception that it’s morally incorrect for folks to convey kids into the world. The clinic he attacked supplies companies to assist folks get pregnant, together with in vitro fertilization and fertility evaluations.
Some folks with excessive anti-procreation views have an absence of function and a bleak feeling about their very own lives “and they diagnose society as suffering in a similar way that they are,” mentioned Adam Lankford, a criminology professor on the College of Alabama. “Essentially, they feel like we’re all doomed, that it’s all hopeless.”
That hopelessness is a method for attackers to rationalize their violent actions, Lankford mentioned Monday.
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