CENTENNIAL — Count off three seconds.
One. Two. Three.
It’s the length of a sigh. On Friday, three seconds punched the breath out of the Aurora movie theater shooting trial.
The three seconds that 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan’s smiling face shined on courtroom video screens Friday afternoon brought an end to the prosecution’s case and, in doing so, gave jurors a final, heartbreaking image of the shooting’s impact.
Veronica’s picture — taken at her kindergarten graduation in 2012, just weeks before the shooting that killed her and 11 others — was the last of thousands of pieces of evidence that prosecutors showed to jurors during their main portion of the trial. Her mother, Ashley Moser, was the last of 222 witnesses the prosecution called — a summary of the shooting’s devastation contained within one woman. In addition to losing her daughter, Moser was paralyzed and suffered a miscarriage.
In a quiet voice Friday, she recalled her last moments with Veronica before the shooting started. Veronica asked to sit on her mother’s lap, but Ashley encouraged her to sit in her own seat. It was too uncomfortable to have Veronica on her lap when she was pregnant.
“She was a tall, bony child,” Moser smiled through tears.
The case now turns to the defense, which has said it will spend about two weeks beginning Thursday presenting its argument that James Holmes should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. After that, prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty, will take a few days to offer rebuttal witnesses. Even if the case moves to a death-penalty sentencing phase, Judge Carlos Samour Jr. has said he is now hoping the trial can finish in August.
All day Friday, prosecutors spent their time checking items off a to-do list to prepare for Moser’s testimony.
They introduced records from a 24 Hour Fitness where Holmes worked out prior to the attack. They showed jurors e-mails from Holmes’ Hotmail account, including one message he sent July 12 — a little more than a week before the attack. His father had sent an e-mail asking if he and Holmes’ mother could come visit during a weekend in August.
“Don’t have any plans for that weekend,” Holmes responded.
Prosecutors called Hillary Allen, a fellow student in Holmes’ neuroscience graduate school program who struck up a brief friendship with him in spring 2012. In text messages about two weeks before the shooting, he told her he believed he suffered from “dysphoric mania” and said “floodgates open now.”
“Well,” she texted back, “I hope things get better.”
The day began with prosecutors calling Petra Hogan, who, along with Moser, was one of 70 people injured in the shooting. A shotgun pellet tore into her nose and burrowed all the way through her brain. She said she now suffers from aphasia, a condition caused by brain damage that can affect speech.
She remembered fleeing the theater and seeing a body in one seat.
“The first thought that crossed my mind was, ‘Is there anything I could do to help that person?’ ” she said.
And the day ended with Moser.
When Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler called her to the witness stand, two sheriff’s deputies opened the courtroom’s double doors, and Moser’s motorized wheelchair beeped once as it jolted forward.
LIVE BLOG: Live updates from The Denver Post staff and others inside the courtroom
On the stand, she spoke at first in short, but composed, responses. She and her then-boyfriend, Jamison Toews, went for an ultrasound during the day before the movie. To celebrate a healthy report for the pregnancy, they decided to take Veronica, Toews’ cousin and a friend of the cousin to the movies, not realizing the new Batman movie wasn’t the family-friendly flicks Moser remembered from her childhood.
Moser was 25 at the time; Veronica, “6-and-a-half,” Moser said precisely.
As Brauchler began asking questions about what happened in the theater, his voice lowered. Moser remembered seeing a canister she first thought was a smoke bomb, flashes that she was certain were fireworks.
She stood up to leave, reached for Veronica’s hand.
“I felt it slip through my hand,” she said.
And then Moser was hit, collapsing down on top of her daughter and unable to move. She remembered being carried out of the theater. She remembered, after her first of multiple surgeries, being told she had been shot. Later doctors told her she had miscarried.
It wasn’t until three days after the shooting that doctors spoke to her about Veronica.
“I was told,” Moser struggled to say Friday, “that she didn’t make it. That she had passed away.”
Moser spent months in hospitals. She can no longer walk. A bullet rests permanently in one of her vertebrae. Doctors had to remove part of one lung, and she uses oxygen at night. She can’t cough.
“I basically have to give myself the Heimlich maneuver to get anything out of my throat or lungs,” she said.
And then Brauchler reached for Veronica’s photo. Officially, it was People’s Trial Exhibit 4731, a portrait of a blonde little girl waving at the camera.
“Do you recognize that?” Brauchler asked.
Moser’s voice broke.
“Yes.”
Brauchler asked to show the picture on the courtroom’s video screens then turned to a paralegal and held up three fingers — the maximum amount of time Samour had previously ruled that prosecutors could show the image, to avoid unfairly biasing the jury.
Three seconds.
One.
The sounds of uncontrolled weeping blanketed the courtroom gallery.
Two.
“Is that Veronica?” Brauchler asked Moser, and several jurors pressed tissues to their eyes.
Three.
Tears marching over her cheekbones, Moser summoned the strength to say only one more word.
“Yes.”
Defense attorney Tamara Brady barely whispered when she stood to tell Samour she had no questions. Moser’s wheelchair beeped again, and she maneuvered out of the courtroom.
“Mr. Brauchler, call your next witness,” Samour said.
Brauchler rose again to his feet.
“Your honor,” he replied, “the people of the state of Colorado rest.”
John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.com or twitter.com/johningold
