Mass Shooting at Colo. Movie Theater, 15 People Dead
A shooting at a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., early today has left at least 14 people dead and at least 50 people injured, authorities confirmed.
Police now have now apprehended a 24-year-old male and recovered a gun after the shooting at approximately 12:30 a.m. at the Century 16 Movie Theaters at the Aurora Town Center in the Denver suburb.
Witnesses said that the man appeared at the front of the theater with a rifle, handgun and gas mask. The man then threw a canister that released some kind of gas, after which a hissing sound ensued, and he then opened fire on the crowd packed into the early-morning screening of the film, according to people in the theater at the time.
“We were maybe 20 or 30 minutes into the movie and all you hear, first you smell smoke, everybody thought it was fireworks or something like that, and then you just see people dropping and the gunshots are constant,” witness Christ Jones told ABC’s Denver affiliate KMGH. “I heard at least 20 to 30 rounds within that minute or two.”
A man who talked to a couple who was inside the theater told ABC News, “They got up and they started to run through the emergency exit, and that when she turned around, she said all she saw was the guy slowly making his way up the stairs and just firing at people, just picking random people,” he said. “The gunshot continued to go on and on and then after we didn’t hear anything,” the couple told the man, “we finally got up and there was people bleeding, there was people obviously may have been actually dead or anything, and we just ran up out of there, there was chaos everywhere.”
Although the headline reports 14 dead, latest news informs that another person has died.
