COLORADO THEATER MASSACRE DRAWS INTENSE LOCAL REACTIONS

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Did a violent film trailer trigger shootings by San Diego man? Preview depicted an attack on a movie theater 

By Miriam Raftery

July 20, 2012 (San Diego’s East County) – Friends and neighbors reacted with shock at news that former San Diegan  James “Jimmy” Eagan Holmes, 24, is under arrest for the mass shooting earlyl this morning of 71 people in a Colorado movie theater. 

A night of fantasy turned deadly when Holmes allegedly burst into an Aurora, Colorado movie theater where a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises,” a Batman movie was playing.

Wearing a mask and riot gear, Holmes announced himself as “the Joker” before hurling smoke or gas bombs at the audience, then opening fire, according to eyewitness accounts.  The deadly spree killed 12 people and wounded 58 more; 11 are in serious condition.

“It was just chaos. You started hearing screaming. You looked up and people were falling,” Jamie Rohrs, a father who escaped with his infant son and fiancée, told the New York Times. 

Police later found Holmes’ apartment to be booby-trapped with explosives and trip-wires, resulting in evacuation of the complex and adjacent buildings. 

The tragedy is one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, excluding warfare.

Holmes graduated from Westview High School in the Poway Unified School District in 2006, where he played soccer and ran on the cross country team. He later became an honor student at the University of California, Riverside, earning a degree in neuroscience.  Most recently, he had been a PhD student at the University of Colorado, but reportedly dropped out last month due to academic problems.

“On behalf of the Poway Unified School District, Superintendent Collins joins the rest of the nation in offering our deepest condolences to the victims and their families,” a press release issued by the district today stated.

Former classmates and neighbors in the family’s Rancho Penasquitos community described Holmes as a quiet, nice kid, if somewhat of a loner. 

Jessica Cade, who lived in the same honors dorm at U.C. Riverside, recalled Holmes as “a very nice guy. He was very, very smart; a little weird,” the Los Angeles Times reports. 

Keith Goodwin, who took a history class at Westview High, called Holmes “a generally pleasant guy.”

“They live so close, it’s a shock,” neighbor  Dorothy Templeton told Daily Beast reporter Jamie Reno.  “This could have happened here, it could have happened on this street or at his high school or at a movie theater here.”

Some theaters have responded to the tragedy by announcing plans to ban theater-goers from wearing masks or carrying fake weaons.

The Holmes family issued a statement which read, “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.” The family also asked for privacy.

A search of court records locally finds no record of any prior arrest for Holmes, who used legally purchased weapons including an assault rifle, a shotgun, and a handgun during the assault.  

The shooting is one of the worst massacres in U.S. history.  San Diego has a grisly history of mass shootings, including the 2001 Santana High School and Granite Hills High School shootings in East County, the 1979 shooting at Cleveland High School,  and the 1984 massacre at a McDonald’s Restaurant in San Ysidro.   

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders was the SWAT commander for San Diego Police Department who ordered police snipers to open fire on the suspect, who killed 21 people and injured 19 others.  Today, he told the UT San Diego that his heart goes out to the families of the victims in Colorado. Sanders said he planned to call Aurora’s mayor, noting that the tragedy “will really cause some tremendous problems in that community for a while until they come to grips with it.”

In Colorado, which has open-carry gun laws, Holmes was legally allowed to carry the weapons that he used in the slaughter. 

The killings have rekindled debate nationally over gun laws, with some arguing that access to assault weapons should be banned, while others argue that concealed carry permits might have enabled theater patrons to defend themselves. Still others have pointed out that in a darkened theater with smoke bombs clouding the air, more shots may have led to even wider chaos and possibly  a well-meaning defender being mistaken for a second shooter and harmed.

Some have questioned whether mental illness, drugs, or violent video games may have played a role in Holmes’ brutal actions.

Or, perhaps, a preview that bore an eery similarity to Holmes’ violent actions.

Warner Bros. swiftly cancelled showings of a trailer for the film "Gangster Squad," which had been running before viewings of "The Dark Knight Rises," the Los Angeles Times reports. The “Gangster Squad” trailer depicted men armed with automatic weapons attacking a movie theater.

“While we pray for those who have died, their families, and indeed the perpetrator and his family, we should pause to question the culture of violence that is pervasive in our country,” Rev. James R. Mathes, Bishop at the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego, said in a press release.  “Guns, violent films and video games did not commit murder,” he acknowledged, “a very disturbed individual did.”  But he added that “the lethal combination of available guns and the relentless presentation of violent acts” make violence seem inconsequential.

“We can go a long way as a society by having sensible gun control and by saying no to entertainment through violence,” the Bishop concluded.

 

 


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