2012 Aurora shooting
Sign in to savemass shooting in a movie theater in the United States
Key facts
- Date
- July 20, 2012 ; 13 years ago ( 2012-07-20 ) , c. 12:38 a.m. – c. 12:45 a.m. ( MDT ; UTC−06:00 )
- Target
- Primarily young adults watching The Dark Knight Rises
- Attack type
- Mass shooting , mass murder , tear gas attack
- Weapons
- Two tear gas grenades .223 Smith & Wesson M&P15 Sport semi-automatic rifle Remington 870 Express Tactical 12-gauge shotgun .40 S&W Glock 22 Gen4 handgun
- Injured
- 70 (58 by gunfire, 4 from tear gas, 8 from fleeing accidents)
- Perpetrator
- James Holmes
- Motive
- Disputed:, Acquiring fame/ infamy (prosecution) Severe mental illness (defense) Undetermined (psychological evaluation)
- Verdict
- Guilty on all counts
- Convictions
- First-degree murder (24 counts) Attempted first-degree murder (140 counts) Possessing an illegal explosive device
- Sentence
- 12 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole plus 3,318 years
via Wikipedia infobox
~34 min read
Encyclopedic overview
On July 20, 2012, a mass shooting occurred inside a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, United States, during a midnight screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises. 24-year-old James Eagan Holmes set off tear gas grenades and shot into the audience with multiple firearms. Twelve people were fatally shot and 70 others were injured, 58 of them due to gunfire.
Holmes was arrested minutes later in his car outside the cinema. Earlier, he had rigged his apartment with homemade explosives and incendiary devices. These were defused by the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad a day after the shooting.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “2012 Aurora shooting” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.