Colorado Massacre Suspect To Make Court Appearance Monday
By VOA
The gunman who allegedly killed 12 people and wounded 58 others in a Colorado movie theater makes his first court appearance Monday.
Prison authorities are keeping James Holmes in solitary confinement in Aurora, Colorado, near Denver.
Holmes is accused of tossing tear gas into the theater during a midnight screening of the new Batman film The Dark Night Rises, before shooting at the audience. Police arrested him as he stood outside his car in the parking lot. He was holding several weapons.
The youngest fatality was a 6-year-old girl whose mother was seriously wounded.
President Barack Obama is in Aurora to hold private meetings with the victims’ families. Churchgoers sobbed during Sunday morning services across the town, and a memorial has been placed outside the theater.
Little is known about Holmes or his motives other than he is a former PhD student in neuroscience. Police have taken his computer from his apartment, which Holmes had booby-trapped with 60 explosive devices set up to kill anyone who entered.
“Make no mistake. This apartment was designed, I say, based on everything I have seen, to kill whoever entered it. And who was most likely to enter that location after he planned and executed this horrific crime? It was going to be a police officer,” said Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates.
