Batman shooting: the victims’ stories

“Oh man one hour till the movie and its going to be the best BIRTHDAY
ever,” he wrote excitedly on Twitter late on Thursday night.

But Mr Sullivan, who was married, has now been confirmed as one of the 12
people shot dead as the film played out on screen. The youngest victim of
James Holmes’ rampage was identified by her family as Veronica Moser, who
was aged just six. Her mother Ashley Moser, 25, was critically ill in
hospital after being shot in the throat and abdomen.

Another 11 of the 58 injured remained in critical condition.

The names of victims were being made public on Saturday, hours after the
authorities confirmed the worst fears of families of the missing.

Matt McQuinn, 27, died as he sheltered his girlfriend Samantha Yowler from the
barrage of gunfire. It was just one of many tales of heroism amid the
horrors inside the cinema.

The couple had recently moved to Aurora from Ohio. Miss Yowler’s brother,
Nick, who was also at the screening, said that although his sister was hit
by a bullet, Mr McQuinn’s bravery had saved her life.

Like Mr McQuinn, Jon Blunk sacrificed himself to save his girlfriend, Jansen
Young, as he pushed her under a seat to shield her. “Jon just took a bullet
for me,” Miss Young said of her boyfriend, a former serviceman who was
planning to re-enlist.

Alex Tevez, originally from Phoenix, was the 10th victim named. “Alex Teves
was one of the best men I ever knew,” said a friend identified on Twitter as
Caitlin who was next to him when he was shot. “The world isn’t as good a
place without him.”

Two US servicemen were also named among the dead — John Larimer, 27, a third
petty officer in the navy, and Staff Sgt Jesse Childress, an air force
reservist. Aurora is home to a large military base and two other US navy and
air force personnel were among the injured, the Pentagon said.

Families did not receive confirmation of victims’ identities until Friday
evening. Bodies had not been removed from the cinema for several hours while
police and coroner’s officers conducted investigations.

But for many friends and relatives of the missing, that wait brought hours of
uncertainty. Several toured hospitals treating the injured in the hope that
their loved ones had survived.

“It took about 19 hours to hear from law enforcement, which was agonising
and I thought just outright cruel to all the victims’ families,” said
Anita Busch, whose cousin, Micayla Medek, 23, was another victim named
yesterday. “We had been desperately trying to find her.”

Friends of AJ Boik, a popular 18-year-old, took to Twitter to mourn his
passing.

The first name to be made public had been that of Jessica Ghawi, 24, who moved
the Denver area from Texas to pursue her dream of a career as a sports
journalist.

In early June, she had left a Toronto shopping mall just before a gunman
opened fire on the food court where she had been.

“I was shown how fragile life was on Saturday,” she wrote at the
time. I saw the terror on bystanders’ faces. I saw the victims of a
senseless crime. I saw lives change.

“I was reminded that we don’t know when or where our time on Earth will
end. When or where we will breathe our last breath.”

Her brother Jordan flew to Colorado to bring her body home. But he also said
that he wanted America to celebrate the lives of the dead rather than
focusing on the atrocity committed by the killer.

“Let us remember the names of the victims rather than the name of the
coward who committed this act,” he said.

Mental health and grief counsellors worked with victims’ relatives and
survivors this weekend. A candlelit vigil was held in a park opposite the
cinema on Friday night as a city that was listed as the 9th safest in the US
last year mourned its dead.

But for others, there were remarkable stories of survival and celebration.
Patricia Legarreta and her fiancé Jamie Rohrs went to the film with their
four-month-old baby son and four-year-old daughter.

The couple were separated during the chaos and Miss Legaretta suffered leg
wounds after she grabbed her children. They only learned that they had both
survived when they were re-united in hospital.

And there they also made a decision about their lives. “He just looked at
me and he said, ‘I know this is not the time and place, but will you marry
me?’,” said Miss Legarreta. “And I said, ‘Yes’. Going through 10
minutes of thinking he was dead and I would never see him again, you never
want that feeling again.”

Police are still seeking a motive for the shooting spree unleashed by James
Holmes, 24, when he opened fire on the audience at a screening of The Dark
Knight Rises shortly after midnight on Friday. Investigators are hoping to
examine his apartment for clues after a bomb disposal squad conducted a
series of explosions yesterday in his booby-trapped home.

When he surrendered to police, Holmes had dyed orange-red hair and told them
he was “The Joker”, referring to the villain in Batman.

The neuroscience graduate, who recently dropped out of his doctoral studies,
makes his first court appearance tomorrow.

Details have emerged of his background from a suburban Californian family, the
son of a scientist and a nurse, but who struggled to make friends.

He was armed with an assault rifle, two Glock pistols and a shotgun that he
bought legally during the past two months in Denver area gun stores. He also
legally purchased 6,000 rounds of ammunition online.

President Barack Obama urged Americans to pray “for the victims of this
terrible tragedy, for the people who knew them and loved them, for those who
are still struggling to recover”. But, in an election year, he made no
reference to US gun laws.

Warner Brothers, the distributor of the $250 million film, has cancelled
premieres in Mexico City and Tokyo. The rampage has done nothing to deter
audiences. So many people went to see the film on Friday that it is set to
earn $185 million at the US box office by the end of the weekend, which
would make it one of Hollywood’s most lucrative openings.

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