My condolences to those that lost their lives and my prayers go out to those injured in this horrible shooting rampage.
LA Times reports — The suspect in the shooting rampage at a Colorado movie theater has been identified as James Holmes, described by law enforcement sources as a loner.
Holmes, 24, was taken into custody in the parking lot outside the Century 16 movie theater after the post-midnight attack in Aurora, Colo., on Friday. He allegedly entered the theater through an exit door about half an hour into the local premier of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises.” At least 12 were killed in the attack.
More than 20 SWAT team members were gingerly searching Holmes’ apartment on Paris Street, a process that could take hours because the apartment appeared to be booby-trapped with explosives, Aurora police Chief Dan Oates told reporters.
Photos: ‘Dark Knight Rises’ shooting
Oates said the apartment search could take hours or even days. The area around the apartment, on the third floor of a housing complex, has been evacuated, he said at a televised news conference.
The apartment house, across the street from an elementary school, is on a street lined with similar apartment buildings. The neighborhood is predominantly Latino.
As police searched, nearby residents warily watched from indoors, where they had been told to go, said Lovell Harts, a 63-year-old resident who moved to the area two years ago.
“They’re looking for explosives. They went through the window and they’re in the apartment. They got our whole block taped off. You can’t go in or out,” Harts said by telephone while looking out the window of his apartment two complexes down from Holmes’. “They’re going from building to building inspecting.”
Harts said neither he nor his neighbors knew Holmes. Residents of the street, mainly renters, are largely anonymous to each other, with people moving in, going quietly about their lives then moving on, he said.
Law enforcement sources said they were in the process of tracing the weapons, including what is believed to be an AK-47, used in the attack.
One theory is that Holmes may be a disgruntled employee of the movie theater based on the fact that he allegedly was able to enter through an exit, sources said. Holmes may originally be from Southerm California. FBI agents in San Diego were interviewing a woman who identified herself as Holmes’ mother.
The trailer of “Gangster Squad” that was playing right before “The Dark Knight Rises” has been pulled by WB due to the last scene in the clip of a movie theatre shooting. It is unbelievable that an executive/legal over at WB would let this clip air, it is extremely violent.
Deadline reports — EXCLUSIVE … UPDATE 9:30 AM: Warner Bros is now telling me that its outside non-studio spokeswoman failed to tell me the whole and accurate story about the process that led to the studio taking down its offensive Gangster Squad trailer this morning. A Warner Bros executive now tells me how the studio was scrambling to deal with the Aurora theater shooting crisis in the pre-dawn hours of the morning. Then, at 5 AM, one of the top distribution execs remembered that Warner Bros’ Gangster Squad trailer was playing “loose” this weekend timed to the studio’s The Dark Knight Rises release in about 30% of domestic theaters. (“Loose” means that theaters had been asked to play the trailer which was not paired with The Dark Knight Rises.)
According to Warner Bros, this distribution exec suddenly remembered that the trailer for the mob movie contained a scene showing a gangster with a machine gun shooting up people in a movie theater from behind the big screen. This distribution exec quickly instructed the studio to “replace it as soon as possible”. At 6 AM, Warner Bros started notifying the theater circuits to pull the offensive Gangster Squad trailer. That is being done all over North America today. Meanwhile, Warner Bros’ marketing department is scrambling to get out its second-generation Gangster Squad trailer already in the works. This new trailer, without the movie theater scene, will be swapped out for the offensive one within a week. Warner Bros says this is now the whole story.
And the studio’s explanation which I absolutely believe also makes clear that, while my phone calls overlapped with their behind-the-scenes process, I was not responsible for the studio pulling the offensive Gangster Squad trailer with the movie theater shooting scene.
PREVIOUS 7:30 AM: This was truly terrible decision-making by Warner Bros – both to release a trailer like this and then not to pull it immediately after today’s tragedy. I have confirmed that the studio which released The Dark Knight Rises paired offered it with the official movie trailer for Gangster Squad, an upcoming pic set in 1949 about a ruthless Mafia Godfather who runs Los Angeles. One of the scenes in the trailer that’s been playing all morning today shows a gangster with a machine gun shooting up people in a movie theater from behind the big screen. Several outraged moviegoers tipped me to this scene.
This morning I called on Warner Bros to take this trailer down immediately. The studio’s response to me? “There’s a meeting about this and then a decision will be reached.” I just received the call that the trailer is being pulled. But only after I complained. And yet movie moguls wonder why so much of the country hates Hollywood values where money trumps everything, even during the Aurora theater shooting tragedy. Here’s the horrible clip which no one at Warner Bros should have allowed to be made, much less released, in the first place:
