A man charged with driving to Madison, Wisconsin to shoot an abortion doctor had in his hotel room, according to charging documents, a map with the words, “Blessed Virgin Mary says Hell awaits any woman having an abortion” written on it
The complaint, filed in Wisconsin’s Dane County Circuit Court, charged Ralph W. Lang, 63, with attempted first-degree intentional homicide for allegedly attempting to kill the doctor at a Madison Planned Parenthood.
Lang was arrested Wednesday night when his gun went off in his motel room not far from the Planned Parenthood clinic that he planned to attack Thursday.
Lang told a Madison police officer at the Motel 6, 1754 Thierer Road, that he had a gun “to lay out abortionists because they are killing babies,” according to the criminal complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court.
Lang said he planned on shooting the clinic’s doctor “right in the head,” according to the complaint. Asked if he planned to shoot just the doctor or nurses, too, Lang replied he wished he “could line them up all in a row, get a machine gun, and mow them all down,” the complaint said.
According to Reuters:
A nurse at Planned Parenthood in Madison said she is familiar with Lang, and that she saw him outside the facility last week, according to the complaint. Lang was arrested in 2007 outside Planned Parenthood, telling an officer at the time that the “Bible states that anyone involved in abortion should be executed.”
Perhaps most disturbing for the people at the clinic is that Lang allegedly admitted he had brought a gun there last week but didn’t use it because he was having “spiritual struggles and was not 100 percent in sync with God.”
The case triggers memories of Scott Roeder, who received a life sentence a year ago for gunning down Dr. George Tiller during Sunday service in his church. Roeder had testified that he killed Tiller because he was protecting unborn children.
