As Palm Springs reels in wake of clinic bombing, authorities name suspect and say city is safe
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PALM SPRINGS — Less than 24 hours after a bomb explosion laid waste to a Palm Springs fertility clinic, the resort town’s police chief sought to restore calm while residents and visitors uneasily returned to their weekend routines.
As of midday Sunday, several blocks in uptown Palm Springs remained closed, blocked off with barricades and police vehicles. Caution tape brightly punctuated the desert landscape, glowing neon yellow against the low-slung, dun-colored buildings and blue-gray San Jacinto mountains in the background.
The area has vintage shops, restaurants and hip hotels, along with medical offices clustered around the local hospital, Desert Regional Medical Center — which sits across the street from American Reproductive Centers, a fertility clinic and in vitro fertilization lab.
The bombing shattered the Saturday morning quiet here and caused destruction blocks away. In a section of Southern California just miles from the mighty San Andreas fault, many residents feared the “Big One” was nigh when the bomb detonated.
But it was an intentional act of terrorism that caused extensive damage to American Reproductive Centers and the surrounding area.
An office building two blocks from the blast had its windows blown out, as did a Denny’s restaurant five blocks from the fertility center. The shaking radiated far and wide, with residents reportedly feeling it more than two miles away.
“Yesterday, a man intent on harming others in our city failed. Palm Springs survived, and we are stronger and more resilient,” Palm Springs Police Chief Andrew Mills said Sunday. Authorities named the suspect as Guy Edward Bartkus, a 25-year-old Twentynine Palms resident who is believed to have died in the blast. There were no other fatalities.
Mills said there was “no continuing threat” to the community, underscoring that he was “absolutely confident” that the city was safe.
Palm Springs is “a beacon and a safe haven for all,” Mills said. He urged residents to upload photos to social media to “show the world” how “wonderful” and “special” the community still is.
A suspected bomb blast that authorities believe was ‘an intentional act of terrorism’ outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic left one person dead and additional people injured.
American Reproductive Centers is “Coachella Valley’s first and only full-service fertility center and IVF lab,” led by board-certified Dr. Maher A. Abdallah, according to its website. The explosion damaged the practice’s office space, where it conducts consultations with patients, but left the IVF lab and the stored embryos there unharmed.
The clinic has helped more than 2,000 families become parents and highlights its work with LGBTQ+ families, according to its website.
Mills, the police chief, spoke directly to the “IVF community” during the Sunday news conference, saying “the city is in your court” and characterizing the embryos housed at the clinic as future community leaders.
“This was a place of hope. This is a building people go to to start and expand families,” Palm Springs Mayor Pro Tem Naomi Soto said of the clinic. “This is a building where hope lives.”
Vintage store Iconic Atomic is located just outside the police line along one of Palm Springs’ main drags.
“Closed due to explosion,” read a sign affixed to the door, “will reopen Sunday if safe.” Store manager Amanda Hall sat outside, soaking up the desert sun and light breeze.
Hall said she was talking to customers and dressing a mannequin Saturday morning when it suddenly felt like a wave violently crashed into the shop. The impact knocked a shelf off the walls, and vintage Kentucky Derby glasses shattered onto the floor.
“The blast is like nothing I’ve ever heard in my life,” she said. “I’ve never been so close to a terrorist attack.”
The scene outside was chaotic, with alarms ringing and people running along Palm Canyon Drive, she said. But even in that moment, she was comforted by how the community responded in a city with a reputation for being warm, friendly and safe.
“The lovely thing was — if there can be a good thing in this — everybody was stopping to ask everybody if they were OK and they needed anything,” said Hall, who moved from North Hollywood to the Palm Springs area in 2021. “That doesn’t happen in Los Angeles.”
Just on the other side of the police line, Palm Springs still felt like an idyllic weekend retreat.
Below swaying palm trees, people walked small dogs and tooled around on cruiser bikes. A group of friends who had spent recent days in nearby Joshua Tree National Park stopped to get drinks at Ernest Coffee and were shocked to find themselves near the crime scene. “Wild!” one of them said.
To some Palm Springs residents, the fact that the attack targeted a fertility clinic was particularly offensive to the city’s values.
When he heard about the explosion, Christian Agnelli said his first thought about the suspect was, “where were they from? Because they’re not from Palm Springs.”
He was on a walk with his neighbor Deanne Stalnaker, who added about their community: “We’re friendly, we’re open, we respect everybody.”
Adam Neal and Todd Danforth, two other Palm Springs residents, said they have many friends who have relied on fertility clinics to start families. They said it didn’t feel as if the attack targeted LGBTQ people, but it certainly sent a message that rippled through the community in a town long known as a queer mecca.
“Lots of different families utilize these types of services, but LGBT families specifically have a higher need for it because we don’t really have as many options as straight couples do,” Neal said.
Times staff writers Jenny Jarvie, Nathan Solis, Richard Winton, Libor Jany and Paige St. John contributed to this report.
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