A gunman dressed in what some witnesses describe as a riot helmet, gas mask, and bulletproof vest, opened fire in a packed theater where a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises was underway killing 14 and wounding at least 50.
A gunman opened fire early Friday at a suburban Denver movie theater on the opening night of the latest Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises,” killing 14 people and injuring at least 50 others, authorities said.
The gunman, who is in custody, stood at the front of the theater and fired into the crowd about 12:30 a.m. MDT at a theater at a multiplex theater in a mall in Aurora.
“Witnesses tell us he released some sort of canister. They heard a hissing sound and some gas emerged and the gunman opened fire,” Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said at a news conference.
Police, ambulances and emergency crews swarmed on the scene after frantic calls started flooding the 911 switchboard, officials said.
Officers found the gunman near a car behind the theater.
“A gas mask, rifle, handgun at least one additional weapon (were) found inside,” he said.
The suspect was taken into custody, but no name was released. Oates said there’s no evidence of any other attackers. There was also no immediate word of any motive.
The suspect spoke of “possible explosives in his residence. We are dealing with that potential threat,” Oates said, without providing details on where that was.
He said police also checked for explosives in the parking lot and at the Century 16 theater and secured those areas.
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 theater.”
The police chief said 10 victims died at the theater and four at area hospitals.
Two people in critical condition were rushed to nearby Swedish Medical Center, spokeswoman Nicole Williams said.
She said emergency crews told her staff to prepare for several more patients from the shooting scene.
The youngest victim reported was a 6-year-old being treated at Children’s Hospital Colorado, where a total of six victims were taken. Their condition wasn’t known.
It is useless to speculate about motive. That won’t stop some, but for once, let’s resist the temptation and allow the information to come out before pointing fingers and trying to establish narratives about this terrible tragedy to score political points.
Come on Mr. Moran, we’re ALL thinking this is an Islamist attack. Even YOU’RE thinking it. Stop worrying about what the pro-Jihadist, politically correct MSM thinks. The fact that they have not released the gunman’s identity only goes to strengthen that. If it were not a Muslim, the leftist media would have reported it already.
If I am wrong, I will admit it. But I remember the same fear of saying “Muslim” after Fort Hood, and it turned out that they guy was a true genocidal Islamist, and our fear of offending these Islamonazis kept us from doing anything about him. How many more law-abiding Americans have to die before we stop with this PC bullshit?
Actually, I was telling the left to wait before they blame the right for the shooting. I guarantee that before the day is out, they will.
No doubt.
The only real question is whether Obama will jump on that meme before noon today.
A gun was involved. Of COURSE the Proggies will blame the Right. Then they will start yammering for gun control again, never mind the fact that this sort of thing is seldom perpetrated by law-abiding gun-owners, and the fact that gun control laws don’t affect criminals intent on using guns. =’[.]‘=
Of course they will blame the right, now that they see it is not a Muslim. And – sorry to upset you — your brother will be one of those leading the charge.
I still remember what an despicable ass he made of himself in the Duke rape case. Even you had to admit it – when you said he really “stepped in it”.
Rick, buddy, did you REALLY think it was going to take that long.
…I wasn’t thinking it. What I was thinking is “How sad!” and then “I bet we are going to hear about gun control form this…again.” Which is sad in itself, because the whole thing shouldn’t be political at all. It should be just “14 people died, how can we help?” But no, the crusade against gun control has taken every tragic incident and turned it in to a political thing.
– let a crisis…”
(“cops arrest Fred, but…” and there will exploitation by many)
Interesting that the attack happened on the first day of Ramadan. Also interesting that a picture or the name of the shooter has not been released. I smell fish.
The name was just released: James Holmes.
And the Bulgarian bomber was a ‘Swedish’ release from Gitmo.
Weren’t the authorities feebly re-floating old rumors about ‘white Muslims’ just a week or two ago?
Wow, the same authorities aren’t trolling for obviously olive-skinned recruits anymore. Nice two-step. This is what the regime calls ‘subtlety’.
While I agree we should not be casting blame or accusations until we get more information, it is human nature to conjecture – otherwise this subject would not even have been posted here.
So I’ll toss my $0.02 worth in with the understanding that this is only conjecture and I am not laying blame on any political viewpoints – just surmising about some things.
I have a slightly different take on it than Eric (above).
I was thinking just yesterday about how divided this country is. We really do have a political Civil War going on at the moment – only nobody is shooting yet.
We even have a president from Illinois again….and he certainly shows no signs of becoming more…ahem…’civil’…at this point in the election cycle.
He even is ruling by dictate – again something he shares in common with a previous president from that same state as he picks and chooses which law he will ignore vs which laws he will uphold, even doing what should be a legislative effort – complete with debate and consent by the people’s representation in Congress – by presidential executive order time and time again.
If you continue the comparisons to the 1850′s, the country was also very divided – and the shooting had already started in places like Missouri and Kansas long before the events at Ft. Sumter occurred.
Then it came out yesterday that the Batman movie had an odd twist you would not normally see for a Hollywood movie in that an Occupy Wall Street (OWS) type movement was being portrayed as the bad guys in this movie instead of the so-called 1%.
Who’d a thunk it?
You had Rotten Tomatoes actually take down comments on the movie as the ‘professional’ movie reviewers panned the film while the Batman fans praised it and some even communicated death threats to the film reviewers.
Anyway, I didn’t really put the two thoughts together until I heard the news on the radio this morning about the shooting.
All very convoluted…..was this guy a fan of OWS or a fan of Batman??? If he was a fan of Batman, why would he murder fellow Batman fans?!?
If he was an OWS type, how in the world could he have degenerated to the craziness in the head necessary to just go into a theater and murder people over how a political movement was portrayed?
Further, and it may be nothing to it and I am just speculating here, but I’m wondering if we have just had the first real shots in what to date had been a Cold Civil War.
I am not dismissing the idea that it could be a terrorist attack, and I am also not dismissing the idea that it was some guy who recently went off of his psychotropic medications or was some undiagnosed mental defective with a Batman fixation and a political philosophy with threads of consciousness that resemble a plate full of noodles – but the first thought I had was the one detailed above.
God I hope I’m wrong….
The other thing that struck me was the comparison to the incident in Florida where gunman entered an internet cafe. Any potential murderous shooting spree in that incident was stopped short by a citizen with a gun.
Sadly, it does not look like a similarly armed person was in the theater last night to return fire and stop this guy…..
Well thought out commentary. Now what we need to know is why Holmes’ mother, when contact by authorities, said: “You have the right person.”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/mass-shooting-colorado-movie-theater-14-people-dead/story?id=16817842#.UAk50v2iO6U
I also am trying to determine if Colorado bans legal carry in movie theaters, and if Century 16 has a no guns policy. Remember that a large majority of mass murders occur in “gun-free” zones.
Yeah, I noticed that was the mother’s reaction as well and thought it very odd.
Precisely why would she even consider her offspring capable of mass murder?
I know if someone ever suggested my own kids were capable of such a thing I’d immediately think the accusers were crazy! Not so with this woman, apparently – so why?
As for CCW in movie theaters, I don’t know about Colorado but here in NC (yes, I do have a concealed carry permit) you are prohibited from carrying inside a movie theater.
I found it also interesting that this guy was a transplant from California. Not unusual except I understand that there has been a migration from California to Colorado to an extent that has resulted in that state becoming ‘progressively’ more blue as the years go by.
California transplants are not typically known for being rock-ribbed conservatives in their outlook on life, though this guy could be an exception – but I think it highly unlikely.
“I’m wondering if we have just had the first real shots in what to date had been a Cold Civil War.”
Because the two sides, left and right, no longer still have just policy disagreements, but totally competing worldviews, and the left even considers anyone on the right to be evil, not just wrong, I’ve been wondering for a long time if there was any way that this country could still come together without violence. The current “liberalism” is the spawn of the 60s-70s violent radical left, and they and this president have been stoking the fires of racial and class conflict for years.
But if it is the first shot, I certainly hope is wasn’t one of ours. Just murdering random unarmed civilians, including children, is almost always the work of terrorists and leftists.
Whether he had any connections to the political right or not, I fully expect him to be painted as such by the media.
In contrasting the OWS (rape, assault, theft, vandalism, etc.) with the Tea Party (areas left cleaner than when they showed up, zero police incidents, etc.), I’d say there is a low probability he was from the political right.
Reading reports this evening that this guy is a registered denmocrat out of San Diago California – and a member of something called Black Bloc, which is some sort of OWS type group with apparently an even more extreme anarchist streak.
I blame Batman. Oh … and Bush
You forgot the blame Sarah Palin.
Let’s make sure we get ‘em all, though–add Romney to your list, for surely this happened because he wouldn’t release his tax returns–or maybe because he had his dog on top of the car.
(Odd how our attempts at sarcasm sort of sound like Dem talking points, isn’t it?)
An Préachán
Blame it on values. Sinful sinners everywhere.
Not that security professionals, with decades of practice in other countries, would ever, ever manage such an operation here. Not during an election!
Sorry, I don’t touch type. I’ll try to do better with my next sarcastic remark.
HALLIBURTONKOCHBROS
I just read the NYT article linked at Drudge and they said he was white – whatever that means. Also I read through the comments there and it was all blame, blame, blame, NRA, gun culture, guns, blame, blame, blame.
If they didn’t have a mythical boogie man to blame, they may actually have to engage their rational faculties, do research, and find out the gun control kills.
I agree, Howard. The article also said he was born in 1987. I have been increasingly dismayed at the rate at which our young people are being put on psychotropic drugs beginning with ritalin at a young age and moving on to the “typical teenage cocktail” as one young highschooler referred to her daily intake of prescription mind/mood-controlling substances. This is the conversation I would like to have.
Quite true.
A while back I did a little research on my own on all of the shootings I could find information on, all the way back to the Texas Towers shooting and up to and including the Virginia Tech shooting.
Every single one – without exception – had been on mind/mood altering medications or had just recently gone off of their medications. This was the single factor they all had in common.
Good for you, Scott, for doing the research. It has always bothered me that that info is never given in news reports. I think I recall hearing through the grapevine that the Columbine duo had been on psychotropic drugs. I think there has been a huge cover-up concerning the negative impact of these substances on our populace.
Thank goodness the government has nothing to do with either psychiatric ‘school counselors’ or prescription ‘meds’!
How long before they find traces of marijuana in his sample?
Step 1: troll for and recruit olive-skinned excitable morons.
Give them dummy weapons- propane tanks in Times Square, toy planes, fireworks.
Step 2: troll for and recruit white-skinned excitable morons.
Give them live weapons and lots of encouragement at critical moments- such as Republican judges speaking in Tucson.
Step 3: Have the myrmidons- excusi, ‘da American people’- ready to make some ‘public outcry’!
That Time Square Bombing attempt was no joke- it was a failure of the remote detonator that saved those people. The bomb itself was a two-stage thermobaric device- pretty much as powerful as you can get using conventional explosives. The ammonium-nitrate detonates in the cast-iron tamper, converting the heat into a shockwave, crushing the tanks and igniting the firecrackers. The tamper shatters under the pressure, flooding the room with extra oxygen while the propane tanks flood the room with propane. The spark from the firecrackers ignites the propane-oxygen mixture and produces a fireball, which in turn creates a shockwave from the expanding superheated air. The buildings reflect the overpressure, functioning as a wind-tunnel, while taking heavy damage. The result is a lot of dead people and a lot of buildings on fire.
I haven’t read the NYT article, so perhaps you could clear it up for me.
Did they say he was a white hispanic, a white african-american, a white indian, a white asian, or just your garden variety white whitey?
Inquiring minds want to know!
(Sad that this almost sounds like a serious question…….)