Stay-at-home mom, Iraq war veteran named as Colorado clinic fatalities

By Colleen Jenkins

(Reuters) - A stay-at-home mother of two young children and a man who had served in Iraq were named on Sunday as the two civilians killed along with a local police officer in last week's rampage at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

The Colorado Springs Police Department named the two civilians as Jennifer Markovsky, 35, and Ke'Arre Marcell Stewart, 29, though it said the identifications were preliminary pending completion of the autopsies.

Also killed in the shooting was Garrett Swasey, 44, a campus police officer for the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

Markovsky was at the clinic to be with a friend, according to Julia Miller, a sister-in-law who lives in California.

“She was just there for support,” Miller said in a phone interview. “It’s just a very senseless act. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Markovsky was a native of Hawaii, where she met her husband, who was deployed there while serving in the military. The couple had lived in Colorado for about 10 years. They have a 6-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son.

Miller remembered her sister-in-law as kind and creative.

“She could probably do anything from crafts from baking to anything you could imagine,” Miller said.

On Facebook, a man named John Ah-King of Hawaii mourned the loss of his daughter.

“To my daughter Jennifer I'm going to miss so much, I lost you in a senseless shooting in Colorado Springs," the post read.

Stewart was an Iraq war veteran and Texas native who attended high school in Waco, according to relatives and friends.

"He was caring, giving, funny and just a damn good person,” Amburh Butler, a friend, said on a fundraising page set up to help Stewart’s family with funeral and transportation costs.

Swasey was a retired champion figure skater who moved from Massachusetts to Colorado Springs to train at the U.S. Olympic Training Center, located a few miles from the clinic. He was a married father of two who served as an elder at a local church.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Additional reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by Frank McGurty and Leslie Adler)