By Vincent Del Giudice, Jennifer Oldham and Mark Niquette -
PHotographer: Ed Andrieski/AP Photo
Police use a video camera to look inside an apartment where the suspect
in a shooting at a movie theatre lived in Aurora, Colo., on July 20,
2012. PHotographer: Ed Andrieski/AP Photo
July 20 (Bloomberg) --
President Barack Obama speaks about a theater shooting near Denver early
this morning that killed at least 12 people and injured as many as 50
others.
The incident happened during the midnight showing of the new Batman
movie, "The Dark Knight Rises," in Aurora, Colorado. (Source:
Bloomberg)
July 20 (Bloomberg) --
Michael Chertoff, chairman of the Chertoff Group and former secretary of
the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, talk about a theater shooting
near Denver early this morning that killed at least 12 people and
injured as many as 50 others.
The incident happened during the midnight showing of the new Batman
movie, "The Dark Night Rises," in Aurora, Colorado, and police have
arrested a gas mask-wearing suspect in connection with the shooting.
Chertoff speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance."
(Source: Bloomberg)
Tom Sullivan, center, with his
family outside Gateway High School where he has been searching franticly
for his son Alex Sullivan who celebrated his 27th birthday by going to
see "The Dark Knight Rises," movie where a gunman opened fire on July
20, 2012, in Aurora, Colo. Photographer: Barry Gutierrez/AP Photo
James Holmes, 24, is a suspect in
a shooting in which at least 12 people were killed when a gunman opened
fire in a theater showing the new Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado.
Source: University of Colorado via Bloomberg
Judy Goos hugs her daughters
friend, Isaiah Bow, 20, while eye witnesses Emma Goos, 19, left, and
Terrell Wallin, 20, right, gather outside Gateway High School where
witness were brought for questioning on July 20, 2012 in Denver. A
gunman wearing a gas mask set off an unknown gas and fired into a
crowded movie theater at a midnight opening of the Batman movie "The
Dark Knight Rises," killing at least 12 people and injuring at least 50
others, authorities said. Photographer: Barry Gutierrez/AP Photo
Eyewitness Jacob Stevens hugs his
mother Tammi Stevens after being interview by police outside Gateway
High School where witnesses were brought for questioning on July 20,
2012 in Aurora, Colo. Photographer: Barry Gutierrez/AP Photo
A SWAT team officer stands watch
near an apartment house where the suspect in a shooting at a movie
theatre lived in Aurora, Colo., on July 20, 2012. At least 12 people
were killed and 50 injured at a shooting at the Century 16 movie theatre
early Friday during the showing of the latest Batman movie.
Photographer: Ed Andrieski/AP Photo
Police are pictured outside the
Century 16 movie theater where at least 12 people were killed during a
shooting, in Aurora, Colorado, on July 20, 2012. Photographer: Ed
Andrieski/AP Photo
Authorities believe Holmes’s apartment may be booby- trapped, Oates said in an impromptu briefing there. He said pictures taken by remote devices “look pretty disturbing.”
There are several bottles of an unidentified liquid connected by wiring across the floor and “other potentially explosive devices,” Deputy Fire Marshal Chris Henderson said. Police were planning to send in a robot, he said.
Authorities seized two .40 caliber handguns, one 12-gauge shotgun and one .223 caliber rifle, said a federal law- enforcement official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Guns and Mask
The shooting, which wounded dozens, was the worst in the U.S. since 13 soldiers and civilians were killed and 43 were wounded when a gunman opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.“We have no evidence of additional shooters,” Oates said at an earlier briefing. “The gunman was found in a car in the parking lot with a rifle, handgun, gas mask.”
Holmes was a graduate student in neuroscience at the University of Colorado-Denver who enrolled in June 2011 and was in the process of withdrawing, according to a statement from the school. He had no known ties to terrorists, said a federal official who lacked authorization to speak publicly and asked for anonymity.
Holmes attended high school in San Diego County, California, where his parents and other relatives still live, according to the U-T San Diego newspaper.
“Our hearts go out to those who were involved in this tragedy and to the families and friends of those involved,” the family said in a statement.
Costumed Children
“The Dark Knight Rises,” the latest in the Batman series, is rated PG-13 and there were many children, including some in costumes, at the Century 16 Movie Theaters at the Aurora Town Center. The maker of the movie, Time Warner Inc. (TWX), canceled the film’s Paris premiere after the shooting and issued a statement of sadness and sympathy for the victims. In New York City, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly deployed officers to theaters showing the movie.In Colorado, police brought unhurt witnesses to nearby Gateway High School. Officers formed a security perimeter, stationing cruisers throughout its parking lot. Some officers wept. About 6:30 a.m. local time, a man left the auditorium in a blood-drenched shirt and was driven away in a police cruiser.
Tom Sullivan came to the school holding a picture of his 27-year-old son, Alex. Sullivan said his son was at the movie and has been missing since the shooting.
“Find my son,” Sullivan yelled from the parking lot at the high school, which is being used as shelter with grief counselors for people looking for friends and relatives.
Night Out
One of victims was identified as Jessica Ghawi by friends and her brother Jordan Ghawi in Twitter and blog posts. Ghawi was an aspiring sports journalist, they said.“Never thought I’d have to coerce a guy into seeing the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises with me,” Ghawi, whose professional name was Jessica Redfield, posted on Twitter before the movie. She followed with: “Actually won the argument. he’s going! WIN!!!”
Ghawi also witnessed a mass shooting in a Toronto, according to her blog.
Evelyn Marquez, 20, and her boyfriend, Fernando Santos, 20, said in an interview that the theater was packed.
About 30 minutes into the movie, a man clad in black entered through an exit door, stood near them, and threw a bomb down some stairs, they said. No one moved.
“It took us a couple of seconds to really realize what was going on,” Santos said.
The theater filled with acrid smoke and breathing became difficult, he said.
Too Heavy
The man lifted what they thought was a stick. It was a gun. Santos and Marquez hit the ground and people began crawling over them, she said. Sparks flew off seats behind them, Santos said. He said he saw people struck by bullets.They crawled to an exit.
Jennifer Seeger, 22, who is studying to be an emergency medical technician, said the man pointed his gun at her. She said she dove to the ground and sensed bullets flying by her face.
One teenage victim, she said, had a bullet in his back.
“I felt his pulse,” she said. “It was really weak. Everyone said ‘Run, run.’ I tried to pull him out, but he was too heavy.”
Emma Goos, 19, a student at St. John’s College in New Mexico, said she lost a shoe trying to escape the theater. She said people slipped on a floor greasy with popcorn butter.
A mortician summoned to the scene told Channel 7 that the bomb consisted of metal shards and pepper spray or pepper gas.
Bullets and shrapnel pierced the wall of an adjoining theater, witness Hayden Miller told 9News. Several children were among the victims, the television channel said.
Among the Dead
Some U.S. service members were among the victims, Pentagon spokesman George Little said today.The Denver police bomb squad was at Holmes’s apartment, and the Aurora Fire Department had an aerial ladder raised to a second-floor window of the brick, three-story building. Police had the neighborhood cordoned.
Holmes had no history with police other than a traffic ticket, 9News reported.
It was not the Denver area’s first mass killing. In 1999, two students shot 12 classmates and a teacher in Columbine High School in suburban Denver before killing themselves. The deadliest shooting in the U.S. in recent years is the Virginia Tech campus rampage of 2007, in which Seung-Hui Cho took 33 lives, including his own.
President Barack Obama said in a statement that he and first lady Michelle Obama were “shocked and saddened.”
Obama Speaks
“We may never understand what leads anybody to terrorize their fellow human beings like this,” Obama said later in Fort Myers, Florida. “Such violence, such evil is senseless. It’s beyond reason.”Mitt Romney, his Republican opponent, said in a statement he was “praying for the families and loved ones of the victims.”
The candidates have said little about gun control.
“The president believes that we need to take common-sense measures that protect Second Amendment rights of Americans, while ensuring that those who should not have guns under existing law do not get them,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One today.
In an April, Romney said he didn’t want new gun laws.
“We need a president who will enforce current laws, not create new ones that only serve to burden lawful gun owners,” the presumptive Republican nominee said in an April 13 speech to the National Rifle Association convention in St. Louis.
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