POLICE WORK

Suspect Identified in Palm Springs Fertility Clinic Explosion

The FBI has identified a 25-year-old California man as the person behind the attack.

The FBI has identified a 25-year-old California man as the prime suspect in the fertility clinic explosion in Palm Springs, California. Authorities alleged on Sunday that Guy Edward Bartkus from Twentynine Palms, California, was behind the American Reproductive Centers clinic explosion that left four people injured, Bloomberg reported. Bartkus is reported to have died in the explosion. The head of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, Akil Davis, said that Bartkus had “nihilistic ideations and this was a targeted attack against the IVF facility,” calling the attack “probably the largest bombing scene that we’ve had in Southern California.” “Make no mistake: we are treating this, as I said yesterday, as an intentional act of terrorism,” he added. Davis said that investigators are looking over Bartkus’ writings. The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Bilal Essayli, called his writings “anti pro-life,” and the Associated Press reported that Bartkus wrote that the world shouldn’t be populated. None of the embryos at the facility were damaged. Dr. Maher Abdallah, who runs the clinic, told the Associated Press: “Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients.”