CENTENNIAL — When the shooting started, Brenton Lowak and Jessica Ghawi ducked to the floor in Row 12 of the movie theater.
“Call 911!” Ghawi shouted. “Call 911!”
But soon the bullets found them, tearing through the seatbacks that the longtime friends had hoped would protect them. First, Ghawi was hit in the leg, and she screamed. Then Lowak was struck in the buttocks. Then Ghawi’s screams stopped, and Lowak looked back at her.
Lying flat against the ground, she had been shot in the head.
“I prayed over her,” Lowak, a trained paramedic and firefighter, said in court Wednesday. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Testimony by investigators and survivors over the past two weeks has provided a deeper understanding of the July 20, 2012, shooting at the Century Aurora 16 theater that killed 12 people, including Ghawi, and wounded 70 more, including Lowak.
On Wednesday, an FBI analyst carefully reconstructed the trajectories of dozens of bullets that flew through the air that night, tracing their courses as they ricocheted off cupholders and seat bottoms and the bodies of the people in between.
The overall picture was of a shooting where those killed and wounded were concentrated in one area of the theater, even as the bullets’ ultimate victims were heartbreakingly random. Prosecutors say James Holmes, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and against whom prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, had no specific targets that night. But the testimony has revealed patterns in the gunfire.
Nearly every survivor has described the shooter firing from the front right corner of the theater, near the exit door through which prosecutors say Holmes entered. The trajectory analysis presented by FBI analyst Brett Mills, which used laser pointers and detailed charts, showed a fan pattern of shots coming from that corner.
Nearly every shot — previous witnesses have said 76 spent shell casings were found inside the theater — flew over the seats closest to the screen and struck in the elevated stadium-style seating that started at Row 8 of the 20-row theater. Seats in Rows 8-13, especially those on the right side when looking at the screen, were the most bullet-riddled. At least eight of the slain victims were sitting in those rows.
Bullets hit seats and kept going. One bullet was responsible for nine separate holes, Mills testified.
In a stern voice, he listed the holes.
“Front of seatback, and exit rear of seatback, continuing onto Row 12,” he said for one hole.
In the courtroom audience, Ghawi’s mother, Sandy Phillips, held her hands over her mouth.
The pattern meant that moviegoers’ casual choices about where to sit had an unseen importance.
Kevin Campbell and Micayla Medek initially sat in the second or third row with friends when they got to the theater, Campbell testified Wednesday. But, just before the movie began, they moved to Row 16 to get a better view.
As bullets pierced the darkness, he and Medek cowered on the floor. Down below, their friends crawled to safety, unhurt. Campbell wasn’t hurt, either.
But, beside him, Medek shouted out, “I’m hit!” And, after that, she fell silent.
