Daniel Park, charged with aiding Palm Springs fertility clinic bombing, dies in federal custody
Daniel Park, the Washington man who was charged with providing large amounts of chemicals used in a car bomb outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, last month, died Tuesday in federal custody, the Justice Department said.
Park, 32, was found unresponsive at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, the Justice Department said. He was taken to the facility on June 13 after he was indicted and charged with malicious destruction of property.
“Responding employees initiated life-saving measures,” the Justice Department said. “Emergency medical services (EMS) were requested while life-saving efforts continued.”
Park was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, the Justice Department said. Officials, who did not reveal the cause of death, said the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service were notified.
“No employees or other incarcerated individuals were injured and at no time was the public in danger,” the Justice Department said.
Park, of Kent, Washington, was arrested in Poland last month after he traveled there following the May 17 car bombing outside the American Reproductive Centers clinic in Palm Springs. He was taken to the United States, where he was charged with providing and attempting to provide material support to a terrorist, federal prosecutors said.
Prosecutors alleged that Park supplied 270 pounds of ammonium nitrate, an explosive precursor commonly used to construct homemade bombs, to Guy Edward Bartkus, 25, the primary suspect in the bombing. Bartkus, of Twentynine Palms, California, was killed in the attack, and four other people were injured.
Officials said the bombing was an “intentional act of terrorism.” Bartkus was motivated by anti-natalist ideology, pro-mortalism and anti-abortion ideology, prosecutors said, and Park was alleged to share similar views, according to Akil Davis, the assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.
Investigators said that after the bombing, they learned that Park spent two weeks visiting Bartkus in Twentynine Palms from Jan. 25 to Feb. 8, “running experiments in Bartkus’ garage.” Park had already sent shipments of ammonium nitrate to Bartkus in January, before his visit, authorities said.
A search warrant in Seattle also found that Park had “an explosive recipe that was similar” to the explosive used the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Davis said.
“We believe that Park had knowledge of how to create an ammonium nitrate-fueled bomb,” Davis said this month. “Social media posts indicate that he was attempting to recruit others of like-minded ideology and discuss these things on internet forums.”
The attack damaged the clinic building and left a 250-yard debris field. No one who worked at the clinic was hurt, and the center’s lab — which houses eggs, embryos and reproductive materials — was not damaged, according to the clinic.