Moviegoer Christopher Ramos today recalled the real-life horror of the midnight premiere of the latest Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises,” in Aurora, Colo., as a gunman decked in riot gear set off smoke bombs and opened fire on the unsuspecting audience.
“People were running everywhere, running on top of me, like kicking me, jumping over me. And there were bodies on the ground,” Ramos said. “I froze up. I was scared. I honestly thought I was going to die.”
Ramos was watching the midnight screening of the movie with his sister at the Century 16 Movie Theaters in Aurora, Colo., early this morning when 24-year-old James Holmes allegedly burst into the room set off a smoke bomb and began firing at random with up to four firearms, killing at least 12 people and injuring as many as 50, including members of the U.S. military.
Holmes, originally of San Diego, Calif., was a medical student at the University of Colorado, in Colorado pursuing a PhD, sources told ABC News. He was a student at the University of Colorado Denver Medical Campus.
“The image in our heads is stuck in there. I still have the ticket right here and honestly, I’m never going to forget this night at all. Because it was the first time I saw something that was real. Like a real-life nightmare that was there, not dreaming of,” Ramos told ABC News today.
Holmes was caught by police in the parking lot of the movie theater shortly after the shooting still dressed in his riot gear, an outfit eerily similar to a villain in “The Dark Knight Rises.” He warned police that his Aurora apartment was booby-trapped, leading police to evacuate the apartment complex. They were working this morning to gain entry to and diffuse the apartment, which they said seems to be “elaborately” rigged with explosives.
