Man Charged With Providing Explosive Materials for Palm Springs Fertility Clinic Bombing -- Update

Dow Jones
05 Jun

By Joseph De Avila

A man was charged with providing material support to terrorists in connection with last month's car explosion that damaged a fertility clinic and other businesses in Palm Springs, Calif., law-enforcement officials said.

Daniel Park, of Kent, Wash., supplied 270 pounds of ammonium nitrate to the man accused of carrying out the bombing, said Bill Essayli, U.S. attorney for the Central District of California. Guy Edward Bartkus, 25 years old, died carrying out the attack that injured four people.

Park, 32, fled to Poland after the attack, Essayli said. Law-enforcement officials in Poland detained him and deported him to the U.S., he said. He was arrested Tuesday by U.S. officials at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

Essayli on Wednesday called the bombing an act of domestic terrorism and said Bartkus deliberately targeted the clinic.

Park spent two weeks with Bartkus at his home in Twentynine Palms, Calif., in January and February, Essayli said. They were "running experiments in Bartkus's garage where the FBI recovered large quantities of chemical precursors and laboratory equipment," he said.

Park is due to make an initial appearance in federal court in Brooklyn Wednesday. An attorney for Park couldn't be identified. He faces up to 15 years in prison.

Authorities said Bartkus and Park, who met online, both shared an anti-natalist ideology, which argues against procreation on moral grounds. Bartkus died trying to livestream the blast, they said. A relative of Park told investigators that Park made statements consistent with this ideology as far back as high school, according to the criminal complaint.

After the bombing, federal agents raided Park's home in Washington, where they found materials to make explosives and recipes for bombs, according to a criminal complaint released Wednesday. One of the recipes was the same explosive mixture that was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the complaint said.

The owner of the clinic said no staff members were in the facility at the time of the explosion. The in vitro fertilization lab wasn't damaged, and all its embryos were safe, the clinic said.

Write to Joseph De Avila at joseph.deavila@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 04, 2025 14:15 ET (18:15 GMT)

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