c. 1996 Religion News Service
WASHINGTON (RNS)-Minutes after conservative Christian activist James Dobson heard evangelist Billy Graham warn of the dangers of a violent world Thursday (May 2), Dobson’s own Focus on the Family ministry in Colorado Springs, Colo., itself became a target of violence.
A gunman, armed with a small handgun and what he claimed were explosives strapped to his waist, entered the sprawling campus on the northern edge of the city at 1:30 p.m. MDT and took four Focus on the Family workers hostage at the ministry’s main building. Police evacuated 500 of the ministry’s 1,200 workers and blocked off access to the area.
After 90 minutes of negotiations, the two men and two women held captive were released. They were not injured.
The suspect, whom police identified as Kerry Steven Dore, 43, of Denver, surrendered at about 7:15 p.m. MDT and was taken into custody. Police said he was being charged with first degree kidnapping, felony menacing and false reporting of explosives. A search of the building indicated Dore was not armed with explosives, police said.
“I don’t think there is any business, any ministry, any church that is not under threat,” Dobson told RNS by telephone from a Washington hotel room Thursday evening.
Dobson had come to Washington to participate in the National Day of Prayer and for ceremonies honoring Graham and his wife Ruth. He acknowledged the irony of hearing Graham’s prophetic warnings within minutes of the hostage crisis back home.
“Terms like `ethnic cleansing,’ `random violence’ and `suicide bombing’ have become part of our daily vocabulary,” Graham told an audience gathered in the Capitol Rotunda “… We are a society poised on the brink of self-destruction.”
Dobson said the gunman “(was) a construction worker who worked for the company that was building” the Focus on the Family complex. The man, Dobson said, “was injured on the job.”
Police said Dore was”seriously injured as a result of a fall”during construction of the main Focus on the Family building in October 1992.”He apparently was angry over the workman’s compensation settlement and was blaming Focus on the Family,”the Colorado Springs Police Department said in a statement.
One of the hostages, Laurilee Keyes, said Dore promised not to hurt them, but appeared nervous and fidgeted with the hammer of his gun, according to the Associated Press.
“He was yelling and shouting,” Keyes was quoted by the AP. “First I thought, `Am I ready to see Jesus?’ And I thought `yes,’ but then I thought about my husband, my kids and my grandkids, and I thought about how I was going to miss them.”
According to the AP, Dore said in a March interview with the Denver weekly, Westword, that he was seriously injured while helping to build the Focus on the Family headquarters. Dore received a $40,000 cash settlement and monthly payments of $1,126, the AP quoted the tabloid newspaper.
Dore said the payments would run out in a few years, and when he asked the organization for help, it responded by sending him a bouquet of flowers, the AP quoted the paper.
Dobson told RNS he did not believe the incident was directed at the ministry.
“His anger is not directed at us, his anger is not directed at me,” Dobson said. “He seems to be mentally ill. … He perceives himself as a man who has been harmed.”
Dobson declined to divulge details of security at the organization’s campus. “We have reasonable security,” he said. “There’s been only two or three incidents in all the years … but it only takes one. Once someone got within three feet of me with a knife. That was after I interviewed (serial killer Ted) Bundy,” who met with Dobson hours before he was executed in Florida’s electric chair in the 1980s.
The 60-year-old Dobson describes himself as a radio psychologist. He offers advice to families and has been a vocal opponent of abortion, gay rights and pornography.
Dobson, a former professor of pediatrics, founded Focus on the Family 19 years ago. The organization claims a constituency of 2.1 million people and had a reported budget of $101 million in 1995. It is best known through Dobson’s syndicated radio program heard on more than 2,000 stations around the country.
For the last year, Dobson and the organization have been most visible in a series of attacks on recent United Nation’s conferences on world population problems and women’s rights, and in warning the Republican Party not to soften its adamant stance against abortion.
MJP END
