Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 30, 1994 TAG: 9408010044
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PENSACOLA, FLA. LENGTH: Long
Paul Hill, 40, who had openly advocated violence as a divinely sanctioned means of stopping abortions, was chased down within minutes of the slayings at the Ladies Center for Abortion after witnesses pointed him out to police.
``Now is the time to defend the unborn, the same way you'd defend slaves about to be murdered!'' he shouted as he was transferred from the police station to jail.
Hill was held without bail on two charges of murder and one of attempted murder. He also could face federal charges under a law enacted in May in response to 1,000 cases of abortion-related violence since 1977.
Police said they recovered a shotgun, along with more than a dozen unspent shotgun shells stashed in black nylon holders strapped to Hill's legs and in his pockets.
Dr. John Bayard Britton, 69, and James Herman Barrett, 74, had just arrived for work and were sitting in a pickup truck outside when the gunman approached and opened fire with a 12-gauge shotgun, hitting both men in the head, police said.
Barrett's 68-year-old wife, June, a retired nurse who, like her husband, worked as a volunteer escort shielding clinic employees from protesters, also was in the truck. She was wounded in the arm and was listed in good condition.
The clinic was bombed twice in 1984 and vandalized in 1986.
Hill, a former minister with the Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, is director of Defensive Action, an anti-abortion group he founded after Dr. David Gunn was slain outside another Pensacola clinic last year.
``The Christian principle is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you,'' Hill said in an interview this year. ``If an abortionist is about to violently take an innocent person's life, you are entirely morally justified in trying to prevent him from taking that life.''
After a doctor was shot and wounded in Wichita, Kan., last August, Hill said the Sixth Commandment requires ``that we try and prevent killing, and requires that we use force if necessary to do that.''
A half-hour before Friday's shooting, a police officer spotted Hill putting out crosses in front of the clinic and warned him it was against the law, Sgt. Jerry Potts said. The officer then left.
Potts said Hill was a regular outside the Ladies Center and was arrested June 17 for disrupting the clinic by shouting to patients: ``Please don't kill your innocent child! Don't let them make you the mother of a dead baby! Mommy, mommy, don't let them kill me!''
Police tried to keep an eye on Hill, but ``there was no way we could put a 24-hour surveillance on him,'' Potts said.
Witnesses reported hearing six to nine shotgun blasts.
``I heard the first shot. I turned around and heard other shots,'' said the manager of a store across the street, speaking on condition of anonymity. ``I saw a man running away from in front of the clinic. I ran in to call the police, and when I came out, the police were around him on the ground.''
The attack came just minutes before an off-duty police officer was to arrive at 7:30 a.m. to provide routine security at the clinic, a two-story, wood-frame house on the suburban north side of Pensacola, a conservative city in the Florida Panhandle.
On one side of the building stands an anti-abortion monument put up by protesters. Nearby is a billboard depicting a fetus and American flag backdrop; it reads, ``God Bless America.''
Gunn, who also performed abortions at the Ladies Center, was killed March 10, 1993, behind Pensacola Women's Medical Services, the first slaying during an abortion protest. Michael Frederick Griffin, 31, is serving life in prison.
Britton traveled from his hometown across the state near Jacksonville to perform abortions in Pensacola after Gunn's murder, according to a profile in February's GQ magazine. He had received threats, including a message left in the office door that read: ``What would you do if you had five minutes left to live?''
The Barretts would escort him to the clinic in a minivan with a box containing a gun, according to GQ. One time, the magazine said, Britton complained to them that his vest was too short.
``I'd like it longer so they can't get me in the gut,'' he said.
Barrett was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and a Korean War veteran. His wife was a retired captain with the U.S. Health Service.
``Jim was doing what he believed in,'' June Barrett said in a statement. ``He believed in justice and would want justice for Paul Hill. Jim believed in a woman's right to choose.''
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld buffer zones around abortion clinics to protect patients and staff members. The case involved an often-picketed Melbourne clinic.
Gov. Lawton Chiles pledged Friday to step up state efforts to protect abortion clinic employees and patients.
``Florida will not tolerate any act of violence or any attempt to make our state the staging ground or headquarters for a campaign of violence and disruption,'' Chiles said.
A candlelight service Friday in memory of the slain men was attended by more than 150 people.
Activists on both sides of the abortion debate - including Operation Rescue, which has orchestrated clinic protests nationally - denounced the shooting.
``Neither the violent nor the vigilante have any place in the pro-life movement,'' said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney of Operation Rescue.
Feminist Majority President Eleanor Smeal called for federal marshals to be posted at the clinics.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB