Batman Shooting: Suspect's Flat Booby-Trapped
Updated: 4:37pm UK, Friday 20 July 2012
The apartment of a man suspected of shooting dead 12 people during a midnight screening of the new Batman movie at a cinema in Denver is "booby-trapped", police have confirmed.
Emergency services are at the suspect's flat which contains explosives that appear to be "highly sophisticated", according to officers.
A gunman reportedly wearing a gas mask and body armour opened fire on filmgoers at the Century Aurora 16 Movie Theatre in a shopping centre in the suburb of Aurora.
Some reports said the attack happened after the trailers had just finished, while others claimed it took place 20-30 minutes into the start of the movie premiere of The Dark Knight Rises.
Earlier, police had said at least 14 people were killed. Dozens of other people were injured in the tragedy.
Officers have said a suspect - named in US media reports as 24-year-old James Holmes - is in custody. He offered no resistance when he was detained, police said.
Holmes apparently dropped out of medical school last month. His family says their hearts go out to those involved.
A three-month-old baby and a six-year-old child were reportedly among those injured in the atrocity.
President Barack Obama called the killings "senseless, evil and beyond reason". It was the worst mass shooting in the US since the 2007 shooting on the Virginia Tech campus.
Aurora is only a few miles from the Columbine High School, where two students opened fire and killed 12 classmates and a teacher in 1999.
Brenda Stuart, from 850 KOA Radio, told Sky News it "started with a midnight showing of the new Dark Knight movie and the theatres were packed that were showing this movie.
"People inside tell us they thought it was part of the movie. They heard what they thought were firecrackers, loud bangs and all of a sudden they saw the bullets flying.
"Police officers are carting the injured to the hospital in their own cars, not waiting for the ambulances."
According to witnesses, the gunman also set off a smoke or tear gas bomb.
Paul Otermat was in the cinema with his girlfriend when the shooting started. He said he walked calmly into the cinema, threw a gas canister and began firing without saying anything.
He told Sky News: "A man walked through an emergency exit. I thought it was some sort of publicity stunt for a second there and then he threw tear gas into the crowd.
"He started firing shots into the crowd. We ducked down me and my girlfriend and dragged out of the theatre to a point where we were out of the view of the shooter. We ran through the lobby and we heard more shots and ran into the parking lot and got into our car and drove off."
One Twitter user claimed her sister was inside the cinema when the shooting began.
Fuey Saechao tweeted: "People were arguing and a Mazed was thrown, the room got Smokey and she heard like 15 gunshots. She thought it was a joke when she seen a guy with a gun until people started screaming in pain. She got down for 20 seconds and he was gone. Everyone started running out."
The gunman was armed with one rifle and two handguns, the Denver Post has reported. Some of those injured were in an adjacent cinema and the bullets are believed to have travelled through an intervening wall.
James Cameron was in that next-door cinema when the shooting took place. His friend suffered an asthma attack after the gas canister went off and he saw injured people as they got out of the theatre.
He told Fox News: "It has been a nightmare night. A baby girl was struck in her back. That is something that is going to stick with me for the rest of my life.
"As far as injured people, they were all over the place. It was like something from a sci-fi movie."
President Obama told a crowd in Florida: "Such violence, such evil, is senseless. But while we will never know fully what causes somebody to take the live of another, we do know what makes life worth living.
"The people we lost in Aurora loved and they were loved."
Earlier In a statement, he said: "Michelle and I are shocked and saddened by the horrific and tragic shooting in Colorado.
"All of us must have the people of Aurora in our thoughts and prayers as they confront the loss of family, friends and neighbours, and we must stand together with them in the challenging hours and days to come."
Surrounding car parks were cordoned off as sniffer dogs were brought in to search a Hyundai vehicle for a suspected explosive device. Helicopter footage showed a bomb disposal robot approaching the white car, which had Tennessee licence plates.
Sky News Defence and Security Editor Sam Kiley said the attack did not appear to be terror related. He said police treated the threat of explosives seriously and carried out checks at the suspected gunman's apartment building, which was evacuated.
He said: "Clearly on the ground everything is pointing to this being something else. Perhaps a one-off, certainly one gunman.
"The fact that people are at the scene, whilst they are standing at a distance from the vehicle, would indicate to me that this is much more of a precautionary search."
Footage of the apartment showed an officer using a listening probe at the window to determine whether there were explosives inside and officers using a fire truck ladder to gain access into the building.
A makeshift hospital was set up at the mall to treat those wounded in the attack, and injured people were taken to several hospitals, according to police radio reports. Hospital authorities said at least 11 people of those injured remain in a critical condition, with several undergoing surgery after they were shot.
Chief of the Aurora Police Department, Dan Oates, said the suspected gunman was found by a car in a car park near the cinema. A gas mask and weapons were found in the vehicle.
Sky sources said the FBI was considering raising the national security alert level after the incident. ABC News reported as many as 100 agents had been assigned to the case. An FBI statement said there was no indication the shooting was connected to terrorism.
Fox News initially reported there were two gunmen involved - but police said there was no evidence a second gunman being involved, although they were investigating reports.
