WICHITA, Kansas – In a church security related incident, Dr. George Tiller, who remained one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions through decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher and his wife was in the choir.
The gunman fled, but a 51-year-old suspect was arrested some 170 miles away in suburban Kansas City three hours after the shooting, Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said.
Long a focus of national anti-abortion groups, including a summer-long protest in 1991, Tiller was serving as an usher during Sunday morning services when he was shot in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, Stolz said. Tiller’s attorney, Dan Monnat, said Tiller’s wife, Jeanne, was in the choir at the time.
I believe the clinic had high security. That is probably the reason the shooter chose the church for the attack. This could have just as easily been a left radical shooting a conservative pastor without a form of security in place.
Much like school shooters, and the pitiful Amish school shooting, people intent on doing harm will strike quickly where there is little threat of defensive action. Cowardly, to say the least.