(photo credit: The Denver Post)
“AURORA — Fourteen people were killed and about 50 were injured early Friday when shots rang out at an Aurora movie theater during a premiere showing of the new Batman movie,” the Denver Post is reporting.
“A 24-year-old suspect in is custody and an aparment building connected to the suspect was being evacuated and searched for possible explosives, according to Police Chief Dan Oates.
“Ten people died at the theater and four others died at hospitals.
“Sometime after 1 a.m., police received reports of gunshots at the Century 16 Movie Theaters at the Aurora Town Center.
“Dozens of ambulances and police vehicles were outside the mall.
“Police from all over the metro area had been called to the scene.
“Witnesses told reporters that the gunman was masked and clad in black. “Witnesses tell us he released some sort of canister.’ Oates said. ‘They heard a hissing sound and some gas emerged and the gunman opened fire.’
“A witness, Bejamin Fernandez, 30, said he was watching the movie when he heard a series of explosions. He said that people ran from the theater and there were gunshots as police shouted ‘get down!”
“He says he saw people falling, including one young girl.
“Salina Jordan, 19, was in Theater 8 and saw people hit in her theater. She said one girl was struck in cheek, others in stomach including a girl who looked to be around 9 years old.
“She 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 run out. Some police were carrying, dragging bodies, she said.
“Police had set up a command post near the Dillards and were interviewing hundreds of possible witnesses. Some were taken by buses to Gateway High School for questioning.”
The rest of the article and updates are here.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Columbine all over again.
Time to watch it again
The perpetrator of this crime was a madman and he appears also to have been an explosives expert. He rigged his home pretty well.
Timothy McVeigh did not use a gun either, remember?
Before she was shot and gravely injured, Gabbie Giffords told a reporter that she owned a Glock for protection.
Trying to prevent the wrong people from obtaining guns is a noble idea that is also proving futile. That is the grim reality.
Think of how it may have gone if an armed off-duty officer had been in the theater.
The only answer for this now is to close movie theaters and all public gathering places, or have theater marshalls.
Nightclubs have security.
Sadly, theaters now need them as well.
Looking at the stricken faces of tragedy we see now, and have seen from all parts of the world, in Life Magazine, to the network evening news, to CNN and now the internet, we are reminded that the most dangerous and lethal of all weapons, is the human being.
Judith said: “[...] we are reminded that the most dangerous and lethal of all weapons, is the human being.” I’d have to add the words “with a loaded gun” to the end of that sentence.
Judith,
I don’t think it looks much different if there was an armed off duty officer in the theater. In my opinion the worst reaction would be more militarization of public spaces. Night clubs have people at the door, I was one of them when I lived in Colorado. I was a bartender and worked the door at a bar/ night club. I had nothing but the authority to ask people to leave and call the marshal’s office if we had any kind of problems. My daughter works at Sierra Cinema’s and I was a night manager of a movie theater in Colorado as well, the first thing I imagined when I read about this event was her being trapped in a building with a crazy person shooting a gun. I cannot even to begin to imagine what the victims families are going through.
For the esteemed members of the NRA, CCW carrying enthusiasts, and their supporters, who truly believe that having everyone in the theater armed would have stopped this tragedy. In fact, such a situation, having everyone armed, might have led to a huge bloodbath. Original shooter opens fire, and immediately ten people in a 360 degree circle around him pull out their weapons and shoot him, or at least someone with a gun, quite possibly one of the other nine. It would be a chain reaction, not unlike a nuclear bomb, and easily 1/3 of the occupants of the space involved might wind up dead or wounded.
If being shot early in the game was supposed to be a deterrent, let’s remember this gunperson is crazy, under one definition or another, and, if he is planning on being dead afterwards anyway, he will rejoice in the thought of the carnage that will surely occur. How would you know in such a situation that there is not more than one initiating gunperson involved? They are not sending out information in advance. If you are watching a movie or otherwise engaged, the gunman will always get off at least one shot, regardless of how many CCW’s present.
Solution? Carry a smallish tire iron, and practice throwing it in a safe place. If every citizen had one of these, then there might be injuries, and there will always be that first shot, but any gunman would be inundated by these, and brought down pronto. It’s not too hard to imagine the weapons being knocked free of the hands of even the most armored suspect, under a hailstorm of tire irons. The cross section of a tire iron is greater than that of a bullet, and thus more likely to hit the gunperson’s weapon.
Here’s the latest update from the Denver Post:
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_21118201/unknown-number-people-shot-at-aurora-movie-theater
Proven time and again, no way to stop someone who doesn’t give a sh++ or is ready to die. I too bartended in Denver and other places and have been in brutal bar brawls. Can’t stop what you don’t see coming. BTW, I checked the CO gun laws and seems handgun carry permits are pretty lenient.
I’d guess that he had his car around back, well stocked. He came in through the front, set a jimmy on the exit door, went back out the front, around back to car, loaded and dressed up, then barged in. He got into the neuro sciences program at UC Boulder, he was not stupid, just totally warped. Such an awful random bleep happens, condolences to all involved. I don’t think the “why” of it will ever really be known.
This should not surprise anybody in a country where any dimwit who is vertical and can fog a mirror can own firearms.
Ben, Tom, George,
We should also ban all fantasy movie franchises.
Sooner or later some maniac will be shaken loose from his tenuous hold on reality by the notion that he is the “Joker”, and go on a killing spree.
We should prevent talented young actors from playing these characters as well, as such a thing can induce lethal flights from lucidity, in both the deranged fan and the actor himself.
Here’s an idea, let’s identify and hunt down the sociopathic gene, and rub it out, in the womb or in the cradle, all Herod-like.
A gun is just a machine, but a genetic defect can go murderously viral.
This guy’s mother knew, his co-workers probably knew, they saw this coming.
I wonder how many people ignored them.
BTW, I am for gun control.
My dad fought two bloody wars for this country and he told me guns are only made for only one thing, killing.
He never cared to own one after he came home from battle.
I just don’t believe anymore that legal controls are going to work against someone like this maniacal mass murderer.
If I had been in that theater, and were armed, I would have experienced no hesitation in killing this monster in his tracks.
Sorry, I guess that makes me the bad guy.
Judith,
Why would that make you a bad guy? Most people either need to be trained to squeeze the trigger when pointed at another human being or they have the sociopath gene you spoke of earlier. I think killing another human being is much much tougher than we believe and if we do it would haunt anyone with a conscience.
Ben and Judith,
Sociopaths are a huge problem globally. Here at home, not as much.
M.
If it’s them or me, or some innocent, it’s them. I wonder if Colorado has the death penalty? If so, how come it didn’t work?
“Sociopaths are a huge problem globally. Here at home, not as much.”
Boy o boy, are you naive.
Judith, if you had a gun and blew that guy away before he inflicted as much mayhem and murder as he did, you’d be a hero, not a bad guy. And of course your father is correct, guns are made for killing; skeet, target practice, etc., are all side lines to improve ones efficiency at killing, game or people. My father, relatives I knew and ones going back to the 1600′s have faught in all this country’s wars, however one views the PC of this now.
Mostly, I’m commenting because of my implacable disagreement with statements opening your comments, if you were serious, as I assume you were. “Banning fantasy movie franchises and . . . prevent talented young actors from playing these characters,” are just the kind of personal freedom legislation overload that government should avoid. IMO, they would have zero chance of passing and only give the right a valid issue to attack and discredit progressives, thus weaking them politically and the sensible positions they advocate.
With such laws, who decides what movies to include; what books, magazine articles, for surely those outlets of the media would have to be included. Then what comes next? Banning SciFi; Action-Adventure;Westerns; movies like Platoon and Saving Private Ryan and only allowing movies like Driving Miss Daisy (A very fine movie) and Walt Disney genre cinema.
What has been relased so far about this murderer, is that he was considered a recluse by some neighbors, perhaps somewhat odd by others. Many people, especially super intelligent ones as he has been portrayed who are also socially unskilled, can be reclusive w/o being deranged.
And, reliance on always finding a gene responsible for this or that, IMO, is a position upheld as fact these days, it seems, mainly by those left of center, to which I also find mythical. That does not mean I discount the importance of genetics in human development, but when one magnifies genetic influence to account for all behavior, attibuting no environmental elements to shaping individuals psychological development, I liken it to describing the moon, you’re missing half the picture. And environment includes everything: books, school, teasing, dating or lack of, religious beliefs or overload, arguing parents, loving, smothering parents, bullying, etc. Nature vs Nurture comedically portrayed in Trading Places.
But, I too, as a gun owner, am for gun control of some kind and first argued–since my move to G.V.– on a local blog the 2nd amendment doesn’t guarantee a personal right to bear arms. Reading of that amendment had always led me to that conclusion, but at the time I was reading a book titled, A Well Regulated Militia, by a 2nd Amendment scholar and I was mostly using his arguments, not mine, when “debating” the hard right. Nevertheless, I was an idiot, out of my league, no critical thinking skills, etc., yet it was the scholar’s ideas being attacked, along with mine. (Just another example why dialog with the right is usually fruitless and why we shouldn’t arm them with legitimate issues to use as cudgels to beat us upon our heads.)
Obviously I sympathize and share your outrage and feeling of helplessness at yet another horrific incident. I just felt the need to express my strong objections to your proposed solution and theory of causation, which, BTW, I imagine many hee will vehemently disagree with me. Such is the life of one in the middle.
I’m an artist Ed,
Of course In was being facetious.
My point, no ban on anything, not even weapons, is going to stop killers from killing.
I obviously misinterpreted–one weakness of not personally knowing those whom one is communicating with other than by quick blurbs on the Internet. Must have been the 19th century scroll of a very stern countenenced Samurai constantly glaring down upon me that triggered my defensive instincts. Just as my book shelves are an eclectic mass of tomes, my walls and nooks and crannies sprout art from around the world and the U.S. just as varied. Unfortunately, I’ve only studied art’s development under Totolitarian regiemes.
That’s okay Ed,
Cyber communication removes us from the human element. Non-verbal communication, i.e., facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, are all falling by the wayside, and the subtleties of human interaction and communication with them.
I encourage everyone to visit http://www.bradycampaign.org/ and really investigate the platform of the campaign. Gun reform shouldn’t be about taking the right of gun ownership away but rather some common sense approaches that would help reduce gun violence in America.