By JOE STUMPE and MONICA DAVEY Published: May 31, 2009
WICHITA, Kan. — George Tiller, one of only a few doctors in the nation who performed abortions late in pregnancy, was shot to death here on Sunday morning in the foyer of his longtime church as he handed out the church bulletin.
Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's few late-term-abortion providers, was killed Sunday in church. Late Sunday, the authorities said they had taken into custody a 51-year-old man from Merriam, a Kansas City suburb, whom they said they expected to charge with murder on Monday.
The Wichita police said there were several witnesses to the killing, but the law enforcement officials would not say what had been said, if anything, inside the foyer. Officials offered little insight into the motive behind the killing, saying that they believed it was “the act of an isolated individual” but that they were also looking into “his history, his family, his associates.”
In more than three decades of providing abortions, Dr. Tiller, 67, had become a focal point for those opposed to abortion around the country. In addition to regular protests outside his clinic, his house and his church, Dr. Tiller had once seen his clinic bombed; in 1993, an abortion opponent shot him in both arms. He was also the defendant in a series of legal challenges intended to shut down his operations, including two grand juries that were convened after citizen-led petition drives.
On Sunday morning, moments after services had begun at Reformation Lutheran Church, on this city’s East Side, Dr. Tiller, who was acting as an usher, was shot once with a handgun, the authorities said. As many as a dozen other churchgoers were standing in the foyer near him when he was shot, the police said. The gunman pointed the weapon at two people who tried to stop him, the police said, then fled the church and drove off in a powder blue Taurus. Dr. Tiller’s wife, Jeanne, a member of the church choir, was inside the sanctuary at the time of the shooting.
The Associated Press reported that a sheriff’s official from Johnson County, Kan., identified the detained man as Scott Roeder....
Dr. Tiller had long been at the center of the abortion debate here, one that rarely seemed to quiet much in this southern Kansas city of about 358,000.
In 1993, Rachelle Shannon, from rural Oregon, shot Dr. Tiller in both arms; she is in prison. Two years earlier, during Operation Rescue’s “Summer of Mercy” protests, thousands of anti-abortion protesters had tried to block off the clinic, which had been the focus of a bombing in 1986. Friends of Dr. Tiller also described regular incidents of vandalism of the clinic, and a barrage of threats to him and his family — threats they say concerned him deeply and had for years.
Family members, including 4 children and 10 grandchildren, issued a statement through Dr. Tiller’s lawyer, which read, in part: “George dedicated his life to providing women with high-quality health care despite frequent threats and violence. We ask that he be remembered as a good husband, father and grandfather and a dedicated servant on behalf of the rights of women everywhere” ....
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