Witnesses described a scene of terror following a mass shooting in a suburb of Denver, Colorado. A gunman opened fired on a packed movie theatre during a midnight screening of the new Batman movie, āThe Dark Knight Rises,ā killing 12 and injuring 58.
āPeople are falling all around. Youāre just hearing screaming. Iām still standing. I donāt know why Iām not hit, but every time a bullet flashed, you just hear the sound, and your ears are ringing and youāre like, āThis oneās going to kill me.ā My thought was, āThis is how it ends, this is how I die. This canāt be the way my son dies, heās four months. This canāt be the way my girlfriend dies and our stepdaughters dies. Sheās four years.āā - Jamie Rohrs told CNN
"When I ... tried to escape, there was a little girl, 12 or 13, just laying lifeless on the stairs. I got terrified. I didn't know what to do, like a deer in the headlights. I jumped into the aisle and curled up into a little ball waiting for him to go away." - Jennifer Seeger told TODAY
"The suspect throws tear gas in the air, and as the tear gas appears he started shooting. It was very hard to breathe. I told my brother to take cover. It took awhile. I started seeing flashes and screaming, I just saw blood and people yelling and a quick glimpse of the guy who had a gas mask on. I was pushed out. There was chaos, we started running." - Lamar Lane told ABC News
āAll I saw was a man bust open the entrance at the right corner. There was a tear grenade and weāre thinking at that point itās part of the show. But then we realized he started shooting off some rounds and thatās when we realized it was serious. There was a lot of screaming and it was shocking. He started going up the stairs and reloaded. Thatās when I figured it was a big weapon. We just crawled down the stairs and we ran.ā - A young boy told ABC
āWe heard explosions and I thought, oh someoneās brought fire crackersā¦ Then everyone started panicking because people were getting hurt. As we left there was gas in the lobby and it was hard to breathe.ā ā A man told ABC
āI heard the call come in at the nursesā station. From what I could see there were people unconscious, people bleeding. I saw one bed go past, poor guy had blood caked all over his face. He was just not responsive at allā¦By the time I left I heard the nurses say they managed to get most everyone stabilized, which is a blessing.ā ā A woman told ABC
"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. I heard at least 20 to 30 rounds within that minute or two." -Christ Jones told KMGH
"We just heard a pop, pop, pop, pop." - Quentin Caldwell told CNN
"I went out to enjoy a movie and I ended up in a gruesome thing - I don't know how you would qualify it."- William Kent told CBS News
"I thought it was part of the movie, like a fun little prank - that it would be over in a few seconds. It obviously wasn't.ā - Spenser Sherman told CBSās This Morning
"There were bullet holes in some people's backs, in some people's arms. There was one guy who was just stripped down to his boxers. It looked like he had been shot in the back." -Donovan Tate told KCNC
āNo one will believe me until I post the picture, but I was there and I was shot... well, grazed really. I'm doing all right just a little shook up. Me and my girlfriend waited unrtil it seemed the shooting was finished so we were some of the last people out of the theatre and there was a lot of blood. ā said Reddit user āthemurderatorā
āThe shooting began during a gunfight scene in the movie, and at first, we thought it was special effects when smoke rose up. When shots happened again and people began to run, we thought something was up. A guy ran in and shouted there was a gunman in the building, and the alarms to emergency evacuate started to go off.ā - Reddit user āPeener13ā
āThe little girl, it looked like (the bullet went) through her stomach and then the blood running down her legs... She looked like she was nine. Between nine and ten but nothing over 11... There was somebody, a cop, just holding her and she looked lifeless. Iām hoping and praying she was just in shock and sheās not dead.ā ā Salina Jordan told the Denver Post
āBefore everything was calmed down a cop came walking thru the front door holding a little girl in his arms and she wasnāt moving. I had heard another witness who was in my theatre, someone else I was talking to before the movieā¦ she was on the phoneā¦ she told whoever she was talking to that she saw bullet holes in the little girlās back.ā ā Alex Milano told 9News reporter Brandon Rittiman
