In accordance with a presidential proclamation, all U.S. and state flags displayed at state facilities have been ordered to be lowered to half-staff in respect of the victims of the shootings in Aurora, Colorado. Flags will remain at half-staff until sunset on July 25th. A theater near Denver was showing the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises" when a gunman dressed in black and wearing a helmet, body armor and a gas mask stepped through a side door and threw gas canisters that filled the theater with smoke then opened fire, killing 12 and wounding 59. The gunman, identified by police as 24 year old James Holmes, used a military-style semi-automatic rifle, a shotgun and a pistol, stopping only to reload as he marched up the aisle in the theater, picking off those who tried to flee. Authorities say he hit 71 people. At least one was struck in an adjacent theater by gunfire that went through the wall. Within minutes, frantic 911 calls brought about 200 police officers, ambulances and emergency crews to the theater. Holmes was captured in the parking lot. Police say Holmes bought four guns from local gun shops in the past 60 days and 6,000 rounds of ammunition, including a drum magazine that could fire 50 to 60 rounds per minute. Holmes graduated from the University of California, Riverside, in spring 2010 with a bachelor's degree in neuroscience, but, when he could not find a job, he enrolled in the Ph.D. neuroscience program at the University of Colorado-Denver in 2011 but was in the process of withdrawing.
It is the worst mass shooting in the United States since the November 5, 2009, attack at Fort Hood, Texas in which a U.S. Army psychiatrist is charged with killing 13 soldiers and civilians and wounding more than two dozen others. It is the deadliest in Colorado since the Columbine High School massacre in suburban Denver in 1999 when two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher and wounded 26 others before killing themselves.
