Shooting in Colorado leaves 3 dead, 9 injured: Police

Three people have died and 9 others have been injured in a shooting incident in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The incident started on Friday at around noon at a branch of Planned Parenthood with officers exchanging fire with the shooter for at least 5 hours.

The shooter had barricaded himself inside the facility before he surrendered to officers. The suspect is in police custody.

Three people, including 1 officer and 2 civilians, have died following the shooting, according to reports.

“My thoughts and prayers are with families of victims of today’s standoff in Colorado Springs,” Colorado Attorney General Catherine Coffman tweeted. “Tragic loss of life in #PPShooting,” the tweet read.

The incident also left 9 others injured, including 5 officers and 4 people, authorities said.

“The perpetrator is in custody. The situation has been resolved. There’s no continuing peril to the citizens of Colorado Springs,” Mayor John Suthers told reporters Friday. “But there’s a huge crime scene that has to be processed. We have to determine exactly how many victims there are. We’ll be reporting on that in the near future.”

There is no further information on the suspect or what his motive was for the shooting,  said Lt. Catherine Buckley, a Colorado Springs police spokeswoman.

“We only got the suspect into custody in the last 15 minutes so to even speculate on a motive would not be reasonable,” Buckley said.

She told reporters earlier in the day that the gunman had brought a number of unspecified items with him, which then turned out to be explosives.

Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, issued a statement, saying “we don’t yet know the full circumstances and motives behind this criminal action, and we don’t yet know if Planned Parenthood was in fact the target of this attack.”