Fire Damages Building That Houses Abortion Clinic

SACRAMENTO — An early morning arson attack Friday damaged a suburban medical building that houses an abortion clinic, renewing concern in a community still smarting from fires set last month at three synagogues.

The blaze came exactly two weeks to the hour after the synagogue fires, but investigators combing the scene for clues said they have not found any definitive link between the attacks.

Jim Maddock, the FBI’s top agent in Sacramento, said there were both similarities and differences between the fires at the synagogues and the one at the two-story structure housing the Choice Medical Group, an independently operated abortion clinic. But he refused to say how any of the fires started.

Investigators are working under the assumption that arsonists were targeting the abortion clinic, Maddock said, but no group has claimed responsibility for Friday’s blaze. The flames never reached the clinic, which shares the second floor with about 20 other suites housing the offices of doctors and dentists.

The fire, which caused more than $100,000 in structural damage, broke out shortly after 3 a.m. Individual blazes were ignited at three of the building’s four entrances and a few spots inside, authorities said.

A neighbor said she saw a man throw a bottle bomb. The woman said she woke up to “this pounding sound, like somebody was battering something against the door.” She said she saw three men next to a trash bin beside the building. “There was a flash of light, like a match, and then one of them threw a bottle into the Dumpster.”

Bill Hoyle, an apartment manager who lives across an alley from the medical complex, said he was awakened by an odd, muffled sound. He rose to find flames billowing out of the trash bin.

“It was a noise like I don’t usually hear. I didn’t think it was an explosion,” he said.

An alarm alerted firefighters, and three crews arrived to quickly douse the blaze. A beauty spa on the first floor sustained the bulk of the structural damage. No injuries were reported.

Employees of the abortion clinic said a witness saw a light-colored Volvo in the area before the blaze broke out, but investigators declined to discuss such details. They also refused to discuss a claim from workers in the beauty spa that a lock on an entry door had been tampered with Thursday, requiring a locksmith to secure the building for the night.

Authorities would not describe the extent of the fire inside the building, but smoke and flames blackened the exterior walls around the entries and glass doors were shattered. Police cordoned off much of the area around the building, which squats beside a shopping mall five miles from downtown Sacramento in an unincorporated area. Charred walls were visible inside one of the entryways.

The Choice Medical Group conducts pregnancy tests and performs 150 to 200 abortions a week, employees said. Since opening in the early 1990s, the clinic has had few problems other than an occasional placard-wielding protester, they said. But clinic workers said they have remained cautious because of violence nationwide against abortion providers.

Since 1982, federal authorities have investigated 229 arsons or bombings at abortion clinics in the United States, 29 of them in California. Despite a spate of federal and state laws intended to stop the violence, two abortion providers were killed last year. In addition, there were five arsons, at least one bombing and 19 acid attacks at clinics nationwide.

“People have died in the last few years doing our job,” said Helen Stratton, a patient coordinator at Choice Medical. “Whoever did this is giving Christians a bad name. Bombing people for doing what the law allows is just unbelievable.”

Leaders on both sides of the abortion debate decried the attack.

“We’re horrified by this violence,” said Meryl Block of the California Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.

Jan Carroll, legislative analyst for the California ProLife Council, said abortion clinic attacks are “the antithesis of what pro-lifers stand for, and completely counterproductive to our objective of restoring protection to innocent human life.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.