Word: brittons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Britton and escort James Barrett, 74, died instantly. Barrett's 68-year-old wife June suffered an arm wound. Minutes later, police arrested Paul Hill, a local antiabortion extremist who had long called for the blood of clinic personnel...
...what it may be worth, Dr. John Bayard Britton's killer did not penetrate his homemade bulletproof vest...
...Britton, 69, was a man of modest means. When he replaced the murdered Dr. David Gunn as a circuit-riding doctor for several abortion clinics in northern Florida, he realized he needed a vest. But instead of buying, he wore one constructed of manufacturer's scraps. Sometimes he worried that it was too short. "If they get me in the liver, that's pretty tough to patch," he told a reporter last February. Apparently he assumed that his assailant, aiming from a prudent distance in hopes of a clean getaway, would go for the largest target, the torso...
...Britton died last Friday with his liver whole. Moments after he and the elderly couple acting as his volunteer guards arrived in the parking lot of the Ladies Clinic of Pensacola, a gunman ran up to the driver's side of their blue pickup truck. The killer was no prudent sharpshooter: he got quite close with a 12-gauge shotgun and blasted the faces of the two men with round after round of buckshot...
President Clinton was on television by the end of the day, calling Britton's death a case of "domestic terrorism" and promising federal aid to the local police. Women's groups were angrily demanding greater protection for clinic workers and full-scale investigations into other extremists. Behind the public rage was a great deal of frustration and perhaps even some despair. Pro- choicers began to wonder: What good is constructing an indestructible garment of laws to protect a constitutional right if some extremist simply ignores them all and blows someone's head...