The theatre where the shooting took place is only something like 12 miles from Littleton, where the Columbine shooting took place.
From ABC news:
A San Diego woman who identified herself as James Holmes’ mother told ABC News she had awoken unaware of the shooting and had not yet been contacted by authorities. She immediately expressed concern that her son may have been involved.
“You have the right person,” she said, apparently speaking on gut instinct. “I need to call the police… I need to fly out to Colorado.”
I don’t know what to make of that, but I am sure we will hear more. Rare to have the first quote not be something like he was quiet and a nice guy. Rarer still for the negative quote to come from mom. Wonder what she knew.
Eerie page from comic in Dark Knight Returns portraying a shooting at a theatre
UPDATE: People think that the shooter knew the movie because he waited to start shooting until a particular scene. It seems more likely to me that he simply waited for a big action scene, knowing that there would be one.
UPDATE2: Suspect’s mother’s name is Arlene.
UPDATE3: Suspect was driving a car with Tennessee plates, so probably was not from Denver and hadn’t been living there for a long time. Mother was in San Diego. He was from everywhere.
UPDATE4: Shooter’s birthday December 13, 1987
UPDATE5: “I have heard he was possibly wearing some sort of Batman costume,” police spokesman Frank Fania told NBC’s Today.”
UPDATE6:
UPDATE7: One of the victims had just been through and survived the Toronto Eaton Centre shootings a month ago.
I was shown how fragile life was on Saturday. I saw the terror on bystanders’ faces. I saw the victims of a senseless crime. I saw lives change. I was reminded that we don’t know when or where our time on Earth will end. When or where we will breathe our last breath. For one man, it was in the middle of a busy food court on a Saturday evening.
I say all the time that every moment we have to live our life is a blessing. So often I have found myself taking it for granted. Every hug from a family member. Every laugh we share with friends. Even the times of solitude are all blessings. Every second of every day is a gift. After Saturday evening, I know I truly understand how blessed I am for each second I am given.
One of the victims is a 3 month old baby…can anyone please explain to me wtf that child was doing at a midnight screening of the Dark Knight rises!?
Um, probably their parent or parents are fans. IT’s kind of hard to get babysitters from midnight to 3 AM.
Substitute “irresponsible” for “fans” and I agree with you. Good lord, your life will not end if you see movie 8, 16, or 24 hours later. What the heck are you doing prioritizing your movie-going experience over your infant’s sleep cycle? (‘You’ used rhetorically and not referring to Pteryxx)
Babies are pretty resilient, I doubt it would suffer any harm from mostly sleeping through a movie at midnight. I think it’s ridiculous to ask parents to stop being people with interests just because they’ve spawned. Going to see it at midnight isn’t just about the movie, it’s about the fans and the experience, so comparing it to what you’d get 16 hours later doesn’t make sense.
Babies of that age sleep about 15 hours a day. They can sleep through an insane amount of activity too. The baby was likely happily asleep. (If it had not been, the mother would have been asked to leave–no one likes a crying baby in a theatre).
Also to clarify: the infant was treated and released. Some are saying the baby was one of those killed; that’s not true.
It’s not that parents can’t be social, it’s that a movie theater is not an appropriate place for an infant or small child.
I know of very few babies that manage to sleep all night and stay up all day like older children do. If eric has the secret to keeping babies asleep all night according to some “sleep cycle” parents all across the country would pay good money for it!
Yeah, as a parent: Kiss my ass, eric. Ashley has it on the nose: If you know your three month old is going to sleep through it, what’s the problem?
And you go and call people who have just experienced possibly the most tragic event a person can experience “irresponsible”? Jesus, grow a fucking heart. WOW.
How lovely that your first inclination is to criticize their parenting. :-
Yeah, no kidding.
Nancy must have confused this site with Cafemom.com .
I found out about this this morning through Facebook comments from friends in Colorado saying “Don’t worry, we’re safe, we didn’t go to see Batman.”
How awful. I don’t even have words at a time like this. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.
Unfortunately we can’t fix crazy.
FIFY. No stigmatizing mentally ill people, plz.
Thanks, Pteryxx. Furthermore, even if it does turn out that James Holmes has a mental illness, we as a society certainly could do a hell of a lot more to support people with mental illnesses.
Actually, a lot of the time, you can fix many of the symptoms that sufferers from mental illness. It’s called diagnosis, treatment and medication. Unfortunately, our society allows most mentally ill adult criminals who have been convicted of Federal crimes involving violence to continue to refuse treatment of mental illnesses. Their legal right to refuse treatment supersedes the public’s right to safety.
We don’t know his motivation. I’m trying to reserve judgement as to what kind of person he is. At this point all we can really say is that he was a law abiding gun onwer given how his only other brush with the law was with a traffic ticket.
You’re confusing “never caught or perhaps just never charged with doing something illegal” and “law-abiding”.
Denver Post is now reporting the shooter might be a med school student, and has lived in Aurora since 2011.
Umm…it’s hard to say with license plates. College students can (at least in some states) legally have out-of-state plates because they are considered temporary residents. Also, I have known non-students who have illegally kept their out-of-state plates for years…mostly people who had no intent of taking up permanent residence, but the point is that the State on the plate really isn’t that good of an indicator of where someone might really be from. It can tell you where they’ve been…however interesting that information may be, I do not know.
I have a lot of sympathy for Update #6. It’s a lot smaller a harm than the dying and injury (understatement)but will suck royally for a while.
I heard an interview with one of the survivors that the shooting didn’t take place during an action sequence. It was on the Ed Schultz show. If I”m wrong, I’m sure someone here will correct me. 🙂
My thoughts go out to the victims and their families.
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