The Latest: Victim recounts being shot in adjacent theater
May 26, 2015, 4:48 PM
5:15 p.m. (MDT)
Prosecutors in the Colorado theater shooting case have closed testimony for the day by playing a panicked 911 call from a man who was wounded in the neck when bullets ripped through the wall of an adjacent auditorium.
Zackary Golditch, who was 17 at the time, testified Tuesday that he was in theater 8 when he noticed smoke near the wall and a man with a wound to his forearm. Golditch said he was then shot in the neck.
Golditch testified that he fled the auditorium and called 911 from across a parking lot.
Most of the carnage took place in theater 9, where James Holmes opened fire during a midnight showing of a Batman movie, killing 12 people and injuring 70 others.
3:15 p.m. (MDT)
Testimony has ended about a notebook kept by Colorado theater shooter James Holmes that was sent to his psychiatrist just before the attack. The focus turned Tuesday to a PayPal account used by Holmes to pay educational and other expenses.
Jurors were given about 10 minutes to review copies of the notebook. They will have access to the writings again during deliberation.
2:50 p.m. (MDT)
Defense attorney Daniel King says Colorado theater shooter James Holmes wrote in his notebook that he felt divided, saying his real self was fighting his biological self.
Under questioning by King, Sgt. Matthew Fyles confirmed Tuesday that the notebook also included references to the Garden of Eden, Faust and Prometheus.
Prosecutors have focused on portions of the notebook that detail Holmes’ planning of the 2012 attack that left 12 people dead and 70 others injured.
However, King says confusing musings about Holmes’ life make up a greater part of the book.
King says Holmes wrote that death is life’s fall back solution to all problems.
The testimony came as prosecutors begin to present evidence on the mental state of Holmes during the killings.
2 p.m. (MDT)
Police Detective Sgt. Matthew Fyles has read a passage in a notebook kept by Colorado theater shooter James Holmes detailing his “obsession to kill” since he was a child and how to carry it out.
Holmes dismissed biological warfare and serial murder in favor of a “mass murder/spree” in the notebook and considered attacking an airport but didn’t want to be mistaken for a terrorist.
“The message is there is no message,” Fyles said Holmes wrote.
Holmes said his problems at school shouldn’t be viewed as the reason for his attack, saying the “causation is my state of mind for the last 15 years.”
Fyles also said Holmes also wrote that he needed to research firearms along with the law and mental illness.
1:50 p.m. (MDT)
Copies of James Holmes’ notebook are being given to each juror but Judge Carlos Samour says they won’t be able to keep them.
12:35 p.m. (MDT)
Testimony from a detective is revealing new details about a package containing a spiral notebook that James Holmes sent to his psychiatrist before his deadly 2012 attack on a Colorado movie theater.
Detective Matthew Fyles said Tuesday the notebook was sent in a white bubble mailer with 16 “Forever” stamps depicting various scientists.
The trial broke for lunch before the notebook itself could be discussed, but prosecutors have said it contains Holmes’ detailed plan for the shooting that left 12 people dead and 70 injured and a descriptions of his hatred of mankind.
The mailer was sent with four rows of stamps, with each row containing four stamps of the same scientist.
It also contained twenty $20 bills, some of which were dispersed throughout the notebook. The bills were all burned to some extent.
Authorities also found a sticky note marked with a circle with the numeral one and the infinity sign inside — the same symbol found on a calendar in Holmes’ apartment on the date July 20. 2012, the day of the shooting.
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