(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Guy Edward Bartkus of Twentynine Palms, California, has been identified by the FBI as the suspect in the apparent car bombing Saturday that damaged the clinic in the upscale city of Palm Springs in the desert east of Los Angeles, and killed Bartkus in the process.
Most of the media has focused on Bartkus’s anti-natalist views, which hold that people should not continue to procreate, authorities said. The FBI is treating the incident as a domestic terrorism case.
But at least one reporter has raised questions about whether the alleged bomber was on the FBI’s radar beforehand.
At the FBI’s press conference on Sunday, a reporter from the area’s local News Channel 3 asked about the matter. The press conference was shut down immediately after her question.
Here's a journalist asking an FBI spokesman whether he can confirm reports from locals that the FBI was in the neighborhood of the Palm Springs bomber in the days before the attack. The FBI guy says he cannot confirm that, then someone offscreen abruptly ends the press conference https://t.co/uU8heVGyoH pic.twitter.com/8UbwqJfgrh
— 12 Ball (@BoltzmannBooty) May 18, 2025
“We had a reporter on scene at the Twentynine Palms area yesterday, and community members were telling her that there was an FBI presence there in the days leading up to that. Can you confirm that?” the reporter asked.
“I cannot,” responded Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office.
Another FBI official immediately piped in, ending the conference just as Davis was about to take another question: “OK folks, we’re done here.”
The FBI insists that Bartkus was not on its radar. Authorities were executing a search warrant Sunday in Twentynine Palms, a city of 28,000 residents about 50 miles northeast of Palm Springs, as part of the investigation.
The bombing gutted the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic and shattered the windows of nearby buildings along a palm tree-lined street. Witnesses described a loud boom followed by a chaotic scene, with people screaming in terror and glass strewn along the sidewalk and street.
The FBI has identified Guy Edward Bartkus, 25, of 29 Palms as the primary suspect in the #PalmSprings vehicle explosion. The vehicle was a silver Ford Fusion sedan, plate 8HWS848. Please call 1800 CALLFBI with information or upload relevant video/images at https://t.co/CnxyRN1YIv pic.twitter.com/dYAG26xCYY
— FBI Los Angeles (@FBILosAngeles) May 18, 2025
Investigators said Barktus died in the blast, which a senior FBI official called possibly the “largest bombing scene that we’ve had in Southern California.” A body was found near a charred vehicle outside the clinic.
Bartkus attempted to livestream the explosion and left behind writings that communicated “nihilistic ideations” that were still being examined to determine his state of mind, said Davis. U.S. Attorney Bilal “Bill” Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in the area, called the message “anti-pro-life.”
“This was a targeted attack against the IVF facility,” Davis said Sunday. “Make no mistake: we are treating this, as I said yesterday, as an intentional act of terrorism.”
The bombing injured four other people, though Davis said all embryos at the facility were saved.
“Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients,” Dr. Maher Abdallah, who leads the clinic, told The Associated Press in a phone interview Saturday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
