CENTENNIAL — The instant message spoke of doing something evil, of killing people, of “human capital.”
Gargi Datta looked at it, confused.
“Initially, I was thinking he was just messing with me,” she said Thursday.
But, concerned, she and a friend approached James Holmes in March 2012 and asked him if he was telling these thoughts to his therapist.
“He said he was,” Datta said.
Datta’s testimony on Thursday in the Aurora theater shooting trial provided a glimpse of the missed opportunities to stop Holmes before he killed 12 people and wounded 70 more inside the Century Aurora 16 theaters on July 20, 2012.
WATCH: Video testimony from the defendant’s ex-girlfriend in the Aurora theater shooting trial
Datta, a fellow graduate student at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, was the first witness in the trial’s seven weeks to say Holmes confessed homicidal thoughts to her in the months leading up to the shooting. Prosecutors could call as many as three mental health professionals from CU who also will say Holmes told them about having thoughts of killing people prior to the shooting.
It’s how Holmes phrased his words to the therapists that could play a key role for prosecutors as they seek to wrap up their case in the next week and a half.
Prosecutors, who say Holmes was sane at the time of the attack, contend he hid the depth of his homicidal plans from his therapists at CU to carry them out.
Defense attorneys argue that Holmes was insane and that the therapy visits show he was seeking help for a mental illness that had grown beyond his control.
This debate makes the instant message to Datta — sent March 25, 2012 — key for both sides. Holmes and Datta dated for about four months during the school year, and the message came just eight days after she emphatically told him she was no longer his girlfriend, she testified Thursday.
Datta said Holmes seemed normal the last time she saw him, in May 2012. The instant message was the first and only time she heard him talk about such things. Under cross-examination, she said she thought the things Holmes wrote about in that message sounded delusional.
DOCUMENTS: Read instant message exchanges between gunman, ex-girlfriend
Prosecutors say they will finish their case by June 23, and they upped their tempo during Thursday’s testimony — the last this week because of an off day Friday.
They called 10 of the shooting’s survivors to the witness stand, some for only five minutes.
The last was Bear Omundson, who remembered calling to his friend John Larimer when the gunfire stopped.
“C’mon, he’s gone. Let’s go,” Omundson shouted.
But Larimer didn’t respond. He had been shot dead.
So Omundson, who served with Larimer in the Navy, turned to another friend and asked for help. They would try to carry Larimer out.
“We’re not leaving him here,” Omundson said.
