By MEAD GRUVER and THOMAS PEIPERT
Associated Press
AURORA, Colo. (AP) - The
Colorado shooting suspect planned the rampage that killed 12 midnight
moviegoers with "calculation and deliberation," police said Saturday,
receiving deliveries for months which authorities believe armed him for
battle and were used to rig his apartment with dozens of bombs.
Authorities on Saturday were
still working to clear dangerous explosive materials from inside James
Holmes' suburban Denver apartment a day after police said he opened fire
and set off gas canisters in a suburban theater minutes into the
premiere of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises." The attack left 12
dead and 58 injured.
His apartment was rigged with
jars of liquids, explosives and chemicals that were booby trapped to
kill "whoever entered it," Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said, noting it
would have likely been one of his officers.
"You think we're angry? We sure as hell are angry," Oates said.
Authorities wouldn't discuss a
motive for one of the deadliest mass shootings in recent U.S. history,
as makeshift memorials for the victims sprang up and relatives began to
publicly mourn their loved ones. Holmes had recently withdrawn from a
competitive graduate program in neuroscience; neighbors and former
classmates in California have said he was a smart loner who said little.
He apparently had prepared the
attack at the Aurora theater well in advance, receiving multiple
deliveries by mail for four months to his home and school and buying
thousands rounds of ammunition on the Internet, Oates said.
"He had a high volume of
deliveries," Oates said. "We think this explains how he got his hands on
the magazine, ammunition," he said, as well as the rigged explosives in
his apartment.
"What we're seeing here is evidence of some calculation and deliberation," Oates added.
Federal authorities detonated
one small explosive and disarmed others inside Holmes' apartment after
sending in a robot to take down a trip wire, FBI Special agent James
Yacone said. Bomb technicians then neutralized what he called a
"hyperbolic mixture" and an improvised explosive device containing an
unknown substance. There also were multiple containers of accelerants,
he said.
"It was an extremely dangerous
environment," Yacone said, saying anyone who walked in would have
sustained "significant injuries" or been killed.
Outside the apartment, police
arranged plastic storage boxes and large white plastic bags, possibly
for evidence, although no officials were available to confirm the
purpose of the containers.
Police said in a statement
Saturday evening that "major threats have been eliminated" from the
apartment, but the overall threat has not been completely eliminated.
Holmes, 24, was in solitary
confinement for his protection at a county detention facility Saturday,
held without bond on suspicion of multiple counts of first-degree
murder. He was set for an initial hearing on Monday and had been
appointed a public defender, authorities said.
Stories of the dead began to
emerge, including that of a 6-year-old girl and a man who died on his
27th birthday and a day before his anniversary. Families grieved and
waited at hospitals, which reported at least seven wounded still in
critical condition Saturday and others with injuries that likely are
permanent.
Veronica Moser, 6, had gone to
the movies with her mother, who was drifting in and out of consciousness
in a hospital intensive care unit, bullets lodged in her throat and a
gunshot wound to her abdomen.
"Nobody can tell her about it,"
Annie Dalton said of her niece, Ashley Moser. "She is in critical
condition, but all she's asking about is her daughter."
Veronica had just started swimming lessons on Tuesday, Dalton said.
"She was excited about life as she should be. She's a 6-year-old girl," her great aunt said.
Another victim, 27-year-old Matt
McQuinn, was killed after diving in front of his girlfriend and her
older brother to shield them from the gunfire, said his family's
attorney, Rob Scott of Dayton, Ohio.
Alex Sullivan had planned a
weekend of fun, first ringing in his 27th birthday with friends at the
special midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" and then celebrating
his first wedding anniversary on Sunday.
"He was a very, very good young
man," said Sullivan's uncle, Joe Loewenguth. "He always had a smile,
always made you laugh. He had a little bit of comic in him."
Oates said Holmes used a
military-style semi-automatic rifle, a shotgun and a pistol to open fire
on the unsuspecting theater-goers. He had bought the weapons at local
gun stores within the last two months. He recently purchased 6,000
rounds of ammunition over the Internet, the chief said.
Holmes also bought an urban
assault vest, two magazine holders and a knife for just over $300 on
July 2 from an online supplier of tactical gear for police and military
personnel, according to the company.
Chad Weinman, CEO of
TacticalGear.com, said his company processes thousands of orders each
day, and there was nothing unusual in the one that Holmes placed. While
his company often receives orders from military units and law
enforcement organizations, it is not out of the ordinary for individual
police officers or soldiers to place orders, he said.
"Everything Mr. Holmes purchased
on July 2 is commercially available," Weinman said, adding he was
"appalled" that the material was sold to Holmes before the shooting.
It wasn't known why the suspect
chose a movie theater to stage the assault, or whether he intended some
twisted, symbolic link to the film's violent scenes.
The Batman movie, the last in the trilogy starring Christian Bale, opened worldwide Friday with midnight showings in the U.S.
The Dark Knight Rises" earned
$30.6 million in Friday morning midnight screenings, and, according to
industry estimates, roughly $75-77 million on the day. That put it on
track for a weekend total of around $165 million, which would be the
second highest opening weekend ever, following "The Avengers."
Warner Bros. has announced it
would forgo the usual revenue reports until Monday out of respect for
the victims. Sony, Disney and Universal also said they would delay
reporting box office receipts until Monday, a day later than the routine
Sunday releases for Hollywood.
After buying a ticket to the
movie, Holmes went into the theater and propped open an exit door
several minutes into the film, a federal law enforcement official said.
The suspect then returned in protective gear and with high-powered
weapons and opened fire, shooting scores of people and picking off
victims who tried to flee, officials said.
The shooting was the worst in
the U.S. since the Nov. 5, 2009, attack at Fort Hood, Texas. An Army
psychiatrist was charged with killing 13 soldiers and civilians and
wounding more than two dozen others. It was the deadliest in Colorado
since the 1999 attack at Columbine High School, where two students
killed 12 classmates and a teacher and wounded 26 others before killing
themselves.
After excelling at the
University of California-Riverside, Holmes was in the process of
withdrawing from a neuroscience Ph.D. program at the University of
Colorado-Denver for unknown reasons.
First-year students must take a
three-part exam at the end of the academic year to move on in the
program, University spokeswoman Jacque Montgomery said Saturday.
Montgomery did not know whether Holmes had taken the exam.
As part of the program, Holmes
had been listed as making a presentation in May about Micro RNA
Biomarkers in a class named "Biological Basis of Psychiatric and
Neurological Disorders."
Mary Muscari, a criminology
professor at Regis University in Denver who studies mass killings, said
she was not surprised Holmes was studying neuroscience and mental
disorders.
"It could be he was interested in that because he knows there's something different in him," said Muscari.
She said that several mass
murderers are young men in late adolescent or early adulthood. "We're
talking about guys when they're at that ago when they're testosterone
charged, their brains start developing, and it's also when schizophrenia
kicks in."
Those who knew Holmes described
him as a shy, intelligent person raised in California by parents who
were active in their well-to-do suburban San Diego neighborhood. Holmes
played soccer at Westview High School and ran cross-country before going
to college.
Police said they would begin
collecting the personal items left by panicked moviegoers in days and
would move out of the theater by midweek. Shaken law enforcement
officials urged residents to not stay home.
"I just don't want the shameless
and senseless act of one man to make this difficult for families to
move on," Aurora Fire Chief Mike Garcia said. "Go out. See a movie. Go
out into your city. Don't be afraid."
___
Associated Press contributors to
this report include Kristen Wyatt, Steven K. Paulson, Ivan Moreno, P.
Solomon Banda in Aurora; Dan Elliott, Nick Riccardi and Colleen Slevin
in Denver; Gillian Flaccus in Aurora, Colo; AP Entertainment Writer Jake
Coyle in New York; M.L. Johnson in Chicago. Brian Skoloff in Salt Lake
City; Monika Mathur and Jennifer Farrar at News Research Center in New
York; and Alicia A. Caldwell and Eileen Sullivan in Washington.
Copyright
2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Bomb technicians work to defuse the booby traps that police say was set up by James Holmes in his apartment.
