By Mary O’KEEFE

On Saturday at about 11 a.m., a bomb detonated in the parking lot of a fertility clinic on North Indian Canyon Drive in Palm Springs. According to the FBI, the bomb was large and powerful enough to throw pieces of the vehicle that housed it hundreds of miles in the air and several blocks away. The investigation is ongoing; however, the prime suspect is a 25-year-old from Twentynine Palms, about an hour away from Palm Springs, who has leanings toward an anti-natalist ideology. 

According to a report from The Guardian titled “I wish I’d never been born: the rise of the anti-natalist,” those who follow this ideology feel life is not a gift or a miracle, but a harm and an imposition. To them the question of whether to have a child is not just a personal choice but an ethical one – and the answer always is not to have a child. 

FBI considers the bombing an act of terrorism and the suspect was the sole fatality in the blast. Authorities estimated the blast radius extended about 250 yards, equalling more than two football fields. Chris Kilpatrick, a Crescenta Valley resident, was in Palm Springs very close to the clinic at the time of the bombing. 

“I was in a building that was next door and when I first heard the [sound of the explosion] initially I thought it was an earthquake,” he said. 

Looking back he said it didn’t sound like an earthquake but, being raised in California, an earthquake was the first place where his mind went. 

“I ran to the door,” he said. “The building [he was in] was damaged and the doors were jammed shut. I had to kick the door open.”

He was on the second floor of the building. Smoke was everywhere as he, along with other people in the building, made their way downstairs. Once outside he went immediately to the clinic. 

“There was black smoke pouring from the building,” he said. 

Kilpatrick got to the building just before the first responders. 

“I thought something like an airplane had crashed into the building,” he said. “I went running over to the building to see if [anyone] needed help.”

Others began to go toward the building to help; no one could see a crashed plane or anything that may have caused the blast. 

“It was then that the fire department showed up and we realized it was a car bomb in the back parking lot,” Kilpatrick said. 

There was a regional medical center across the street that had all of its windows shattered. Personnel began coming out of the center to help. 

Kilpatrick praised the first responders. 

“I saw them going into the building really quickly,” he said. 

He added that he had been witness to the bravery of fire fighters in several incidents in the Crescenta Valley area including during the Station Fire but he was still shocked at how they were just rushing into this building looking for lives to save. 

He was able to talk to his family in CV and assured them he was safe, but as the day went on the reality of what had occurred began to set in. 

“I didn’t realize that my ears were ringing,” he said of the effect of the bombing. 

As information of the suspect and the investigation was released, Kilpatrick began to deal with the fact that this city, which he had often visited and considered a safe place, but now that feeling was shattered. 

“I feel so lucky to live in Crescenta Valley,” he said. “People are accepting and kind and we feel safe.”

But he reflected that evil can happen anywhere – even in the places where people feel the most safe.