The gunman, who is in custody, has been identified as 24-year-old James Holmes. He stood at the front of the theatre and fired into the crowd at about 12:30 a.m. MDT at a theatre at a multiplex theatre in a mall in Aurora.
One of his victims has been identified by her family as Jessica Ghawi, an aspiring sportscaster and hockey fan from Texas who was in the Eaton Centre during a visit to Toronto moments before a shooting there in June.
“Had I not gone outside, I would’ve been in the midst of gunfire,” Ghawi wrote on her blog just after the Eaton Centre shooting. “I wish I could shake this odd feeling. The feeling that may have potentially saved my life.”
In Aurora just after midnight, Ghawi sent tweets from inside the movie theatre as she waited for the film to start. She had moved from San Antonio to Denver about a year ago.
She had been in Toronto visiting her boyfriend, minor league hockey player Jay Meloff of Markham.
The Toronto-based sports magazine The Hockey News offered its condolences to Ghawi’s family and friends. She used the name Jessica Redfield as a journalist.
Holmes was arrested next to his car parked at the back door of the theatre less than two minutes after police received their first call at 39 minutes past midnight, Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said at a news conference Friday afternoon.
Holmes had three weapons, Oates said: an AR-15 assault rifle, a Remington 12-guage shotgun and a 40-calibre Glock handgun. Another 40-calibre Glock handgun was in the car and police don’t know if it was used in the massacre.
Holmes’s apartment in Aurora “is booby-trapped with various incendiary chemical devices and trip wires,” said Oates. “It could take hours or days” to defuse them safely.
“We don’t know how we’re going to handle that.”
His apartment building and four buildings nearby have been evacuated, Oates said.
The suspect burst into Theater 9, one of four showing the Batman movie, “dressed all in black,” the chief said. He wore bullet-proof vest, leggings, a throat and a groin protector and gloves and a gas mask, said Oates.
Other than a speeding ticket in October, 2011, Holmes had no other criminal record, Oates said.
Some of the bullets penetrated a wall of Theatre 9 and hit moviegoers in Theater 8.
Holmes “surrendered without any significant incident,” Oates said. The chief refused to speculate on a motive.
“I saw a man walk in through the exit,” a witness told a reporter from 9NEWS in Colorado, saying he threw what appeared to be a pair of gas canisters to the ground. “He waited for both the bombs to explode before he did anything. Then, after both of them exploded, he began to shoot.”
“There were bullet (casings) just falling on my head. They were burning my forehead,” Jennifer Seeger said. The gunman fired steadily except when he stopped to reload, she said.
“Every few seconds it was just boom, boom, boom,” Seeger said. “He would reload and shoot and anyone who would try to leave would just get killed.”
Ghawi’s brother Jordan described his sister’s final moments after talking to the friend she went to the film with. The friend, Brent, was injured and in his hospital recovering.
Brent was trying to staunch the blood from a gunshot wound in Jessica’s leg when he was shot in the legs, Jordan Ghawi said.
“Brent noticed that Jessica was no longer screaming. He saw what appeared to be an entry wound to her head,” Ghawi, a firefighter, wrote on his blog.
Some of the injured were children, the youngest a 4-month-old who has been released from treatment. Victims were being treated for chemical exposure apparently related by the canisters.
At least 15 people were in critical condition at six area hospitals, a police incident report said.
The bodies of 10 of the people who died in the theatre remained there during the investigation, Oates said. The two others who were killed died in hospital.
The U.S. Defence Department said military personnel were among the casualties. Aurora is home to a large Defence Department satellite intelligence operation at Buckley Air Force Base.
Police, ambulances and emergency crews swarmed the scene after “hundreds” of frantic calls started flooding the 911 switchboard, Oates said.
Many of the 200 officers at the scene used patrol cars to ferry the injured to hosptial, he said.
ABC News in San Diego spoke to a local woman, Arlene Holmes, who identified herself as Holmes’s mother.
“You have the right person,” she said. “I need to call the police ... I need to fly out to Colorado.”
James Holmes was studying neuroscience in a Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado-Denver graduate school, university spokeswoman Jacque Montgomery said.
Holmes was in the process of withdrawing at the time of the shootings, Montgomery said.
The university released a photo of the suspect, who grew up in San Diego.
With a police guard outside their San Diego home, the Holmes family issued a statement:
“Our hearts go out to those who were involved in this tragedy and to the families and friends of those involved. We ask that the media respect our privacy during this difficult time Our family is cooperating with authorities in both San Diego, California, and Aurora, Colorado. We are still trying to process this information and we appreciate that people will respect our privacy.”
Warner Bros. announced it would cancel Friday’s premiere in Paris. The cast remained at the Hotel Bristol in Paris.
In New York City, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised increased police presence at movie screening in all five boroughs “to raise the comfort levels among movie patrons.”
Salina Jordan, 19, was in Theater 8 and saw people hit by bullets in her theatre. She told the Denver Post one girl was struck in the cheek, others in the stomach, including a girl who looked to be around 9 years old.
Jordan said it sounded like firecrackers until someone ran into Theater 8 yelling “they're shooting out here!”
The police came running in, telling people to leave. Some police were carrying or dragging bodies, she said.
Witness Hayden Miller told KUSA-TV that he was inside Theater 16 and heard several shots.
“Like little explosions going on and shortly after that we heard people screaming,” he told the station.
Hayden said at first he thought it was part of a louder movie next door. But then he saw “people hunched over leaving theatre.”
Moviegoers didn't know what was happening and some thought the attack was part of the show. Then they saw a silhouette of a person in the smoke at the front of the theatre near the screen, pointing a gun at the crowd.
Seeger said she began crawling toward an exit when she saw a girl about 14 years old “lying lifeless on the stairs.” She saw a man with a bullet wound in his back and tried to check his pulse, but “I had to go. I was going to get shot.”
“When we got out of the theater it was just chaos. There was this one who guy was on all fours crawling. There was this girl spitting up blood,” witness Donovan Tate told KCNC television.
“There were bullet holes in some people's backs, some people's arms. There was this one guy who was stripped down to just his boxers. It looked like he was shot in the back or something. It was crazy.”
Witness Shayla Roeder said she saw a young teenage girl on the ground bleeding outside the theatre. “She just had this horrible look in her eyes .... We made eye contact and I could tell she was not all right,” Roeder said.
Another witness told CNN: “We heard anywhere from 10 to 20 shots and little explosions going on. Shortly after that we heard people screaming. Then they came on PA system and said everyone needed to get out.
“As soon as we got out, there were people running around and screaming.”
Another witness said the gunman opened fire during a shoot-out scene in the movie, leading to confusion. The theatre also filled with thick smoke, he said.
District Attorney Carol Chambers said Aurora Mental Health had agreed to remain open 24 hours a day at least through the weekend to help traumatized victims, moviegoers and family.
All four theatres showing the Batman sequel were sold out for the midnight showings, Oates said.
U.S. President Barack Obama said he was “shocked and saddened” by the massacre.
“We are committed to bringing whoever was responsible to justice, ensuring the safety of our people, and caring for those who have been wounded. As we do when confronted by moments of darkness and challenge, we must now come together as one American family,” Obama said in a statement, pausing his campaigning in Florida and returning to the White House.
Aurora is located on the southeast outskirts of Denver, about 16 kilometres from downtown (see map below).
It was the worst mass shooting in Colorado since the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999. Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at the school in the Denver suburb of Littleton, about 24 km west of Aurora, killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves in the school's library.
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