After a madman killed himself and injured four others with a vehicle bomb outside the failing Palm Springs reproductive clinic on Saturday, a firefighter and an FBI agent raced inside to salvage medical information and embryos.
According to Palm Springs Police Chief Andrew Mills, the two heroes clambered over the debris to ensure the embryo cooling systems were still operational because the bombed-out American Reproductive Centers facility had not been stabilized and looked to be about to collapse.
“They go into a building that was collapsed…It wasn’t safe, but they went inside,” Mills said.
After Guy Edward Bartkus, 25, exploded a car loaded with explosives, Palm Springs Deputy Fire Chief Greg Lyle and FBI Special Agent Chris Melzer entered what had been reduced to a blackened shell, with the surviving walls of the clinic menacingly collapsing under their own weight.
“They’re heroes,” Mills stated. “It’s because of them expecting mothers didn’t lose their dream of starting a family.”
One resident claimed to have felt the reverberations seven miles distant due to the size of the explosion.
“I thought it was a mini-earthquake. Things were just vibrating”, Addam Westfall, who was at his house in Cathedral remarked.
The embryos kept in the American Reproductive Centers facility were miraculously spared from destruction by the blast, but Mills noted that even a brief interruption in the cooling system could have done so.
Similarly, the hopes of parents who had spent months and tens of thousands of dollars trying to conceive could have been crushed if clinic data had been destroyed in a fire or collapse.
The documents were recovered without any damage by Lyle and Melzer.
Three blocks distant, the explosion broke windows of buildings and tore through two more buildings.
Although authorities have not yet established how Bartkis, a former military member, built the bomb, Mills said they think he acted alone and that the clinic was only the closest “target of convenience.”
According to reports, Bartkus was a “pro-mortalist” or pro-death advocate who opposed bringing individuals into the world against their will, ostensibly to spare them from suffering in the future.
Recognize that your death is already certain. Bartkus allegedly commented on a website before the attack, “All a promotionalist is saying is let’s make it happen sooner rather than later … to prevent your future suffering.”
The legitimacy of that webpage has not yet been confirmed by authorities.
Due to fears that he might have left bombs behind, FBI officers surrounded his house on Saturday and ordered the community in the town of Twentynine Palms to be evacuated, designating it a “blast zone.”
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The Post noted that tactical teams, armored vehicles, and fully equipped bomb squad units continued to mill around Bartkus’ humble home in the little desert village the following day.
Similarly, outside American Reproductive Centers, an FBI mobile command center had been established.
According to an internal briefing, police discovered two rifles—an AK-47 and an AR-style rifle—along with ammo adjacent to the detonated truck.
