
Some believed he was playing a prank, while others thought he was part of a special effects setup for the film's premiere, or a publicity stunt by the studio or theater management.

Some witnesses thought he was wearing a costume, like other audience members who had dressed up for the screening. Initially, few in the audience considered Holmes to be a threat. He was listening to techno music through a set of headphones so that he could not hear anything from people in the theater. Holmes was dressed in black and wore a gas mask, a load-bearing vest, a ballistic helmet, bullet-resistant leggings, a bullet-resistant throat protector, a groin protector, and tactical gloves. About 30 minutes into the movie, police say, around 12:30 a.m., he reentered the theater through the exit door. Holmes went to his car (which he had parked near the exit door), changed into protective clothing, and retrieved his guns. There were about 400 people inside theater 9.
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About 20 minutes into the film, he left theater 9 through an emergency exit door beside the movie screen, with direct access to the lightly used parking area at the back of the complex, while propping the door slightly open with a plastic tablecloth holder. Police said that Holmes bought a ticket, entered the theater, and sat in the front row. The shooting occurred in Theater 9 at the Century 16 multiplex (operated by Cinemark Theatres), located in the Town Center at Aurora shopping mall at 14300 E. On August 26, Holmes was given 12 life sentences, one for every person he killed he also received 3,318 years for the attempted murders of those he wounded and for rigging his apartment with explosives. On August 7, the jury deadlocked on whether to impose the death penalty.

On July 16 of that year, Holmes was convicted of 24 counts of first-degree murder, 140 counts of attempted first-degree murder, and one count of possessing explosives. Arapahoe County prosecutors sought the death penalty. Holmes confessed to the shooting but pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Gun sales increased in Colorado, and political debates were generated about gun control in the United States. These were defused by the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad a day after the shooting.įearing copycat crimes, movie theaters showing the same film across the United States increased their security. Earlier, he had rigged his apartment with homemade explosives and incendiary devices. Holmes was arrested minutes later in his car outside the cinema.

This number was later surpassed by the 107 victims of the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting and eventually the 927 victims of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. At the time, the event had the largest number of victims (82) in one shooting in modern U.S. It is the deadliest shooting by a lone perpetrator in the history of Colorado and the state's second-deadliest mass shooting, just after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

Twelve people were killed and 70 others were injured, 58 of them from gunfire. Dressed in tactical clothing, 24-year-old James Holmes set off tear gas grenades and shot into the audience with multiple firearms. On July 20, 2012, a mass shooting occurred inside a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, United States, during a midnight screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises.
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