Planned Parenthood shooter wants to represent himself

Robert Lewis Dear, accused of killing three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic, says he wants to represent himself, The Associated Press reported.

Dear, 57, told a Colorado Springs judge that he wanted to invoke his constitutional right to defend himself, the wire service said.

Dear questioned how he could trust Daniel King, his attorney, after King suggested Dear wasn’t competent to stand trial.

King represented James Holmes, the main convicted in the Colorado theater shooting.

Dear apparently lived in solitude in the Carolinas, then more recently in Colorado. He is believed to have moved from North Carolina to Colorado about a year ago, living in an RV on a vacant piece of land.

Over a decade ago, Dear had some run-ins with the law while living in South Carolina but was not convicted.

In 1997, Dear’s wife accused him of domestic assault, although no charges were pressed, according to records from the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office in South Carolina.

In 2002, Dear was charged with being a peeping Tom; those counts were dismissed.

In 2003, he was arrested and charged with two counts of animal cruelty, but he was found not guilty at a bench trial.

He later made his home in a hermit shanty in the mountains of North Carolina, CNN affiliate WLOS reported. It published a photo of a small, basic cabin in the woods of Buncombe County.

The Sheriff’s Office there knew Dear from a single civil citation issued in 2014 for allowing his dogs to run wild.