ARAPAHOE COUNTY — Denver Post reporter Carlos Illescas’ updates from Day 16 of the Aurora theater shooting trial at the Arapahoe County Justice Center in Centennial, Colorado.
Day 16
The Aurora theater shooting trial enters its 16th day on Wednesday, and prosecutors will continue calling a variety of witnesses.
So far, they have called 123 witnesses, including survivors, first-responders, university professors, federal and local law enforcement officials and others who came into contact with James Holmes.
Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to all of the 166 counts filed against him. If he is convicted, he could face the death penalty. The attack left 12 people dead and 70 injured.
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8:57 a.m.
Day 16 of the theater shooting gets under way with District Attorney George Brauchler asking Judge Carlos Samour Jr. to review e-mails from a CU employee regarding James Holmes. The judge will review them behind closed doors at some point.
Jurors now returning to the courtroom.
Brauchler calls his first witness to the stand, Otto Albrecht. Brauchler pulls a model of the theater in front of Albrecht. Albrecht was a grad student at CU and has had a Ph.D. for two years. He worked with neuroscience students and still does. Albrecht worked with Dr. Klug’s lab and worked with Holmes in the lab.
Albrecht said he got to know Holmes in and outside of the lab. In the lab, Albrecht said Holmes was a rotation student. Albrecht showed Holmes techniques to use while in the lab.
“We talked about things in private lives” and socialized outside the lab with Holmes, Albrecht said.
He said Holmes would rarely greet anyone in the hallways. “He was definitely an introvert,” he said of Holmes.
The two went out with other people, went to see an Avalanche hockey game and saw a movie, but he doesn’t recall the movie but said most likely it was at the Century Aurora 16 movie theater, where the shooting took place.
He doesn’t recall any awkward behavior by Holmes. Albrecht said Holmes had a sense of humor. He said he talked with Holmes a few times “and he would actually make me laugh sometimes.”
Brauchler asks Albrecht about Holmes’ behavior in the lab between June and December 2011.
“In my opinion he didn’t show effort, enough effort, to be a successful scientist,” he said of Holmes.
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9:12 a.m.
Albrecht said Holmes displayed a lack of effort in experiments. He said from beginning of rotations Holmes was shy, lazy and unmotivated. Holmes sat in a desk away from other students and read papers, Albrecht said.
“You have to be proactive,” Albrecht said. “That’s not how he was.”
Holmes, however, would do what he was told to do but didn’t have initiative, Albrecht said.
Defense attorney Rebekka Higgs cross examines Albrecht. She asked him if he is still at CU and Albrecht says that he is and that his term runs out in mid-August. She asks him about other people in the lab with Albrecht. Higgs says he and another other post doctoral research assistant rotated with students but the other one mostly trained Holmes.
Albrecht said by end of rotation students are left mostly to work by themselves.
Higgs asks Albrecht whether Holmes was shy and said he had to initiate conversations. Albrecht said he held meetings with the students every Friday. But said Holmes was able to produce a paper when he had to.
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9:23 a.m.
Albrecht said usually people who are interested in the research want to do the experiments, but “that’s not what he does,” he said of Holmes.
Higgs now asks Albrecht about the times he went out to social events with Holmes. Albrecht said he asked Holmes to go to the hockey game. In the case of the movie, the group decided to go, people in the lab got together to go to certain events.
Albrecht said he did not socialize with Holmes after he left the lab. But he said that the third lab rotation was Holmes’ best one. The last presentation was more serious and professional, Albrecht said.
Albrecht said Holmes was not rude or angry with people in the lab. He wasn’t an attention seeker, Albrecht said.
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9:32 a.m.
The jury asks several questions of Albrecht. The first question to Albrecht is did Holmes read the literature on his laptop or printed material. Albrecht said it may have been both.
Second question is whether Holmes acted out of the ordinary when out on events. Albrecht said no. Third question is how Homes interacted outside of class. He doesn’t remember. Next question is whether other students have been shy? Albrecht said there were some who were shy.
Final question: If Holmes only spent a few hours on an experiment, what he did with his rest of the time? “He would just leave,” Albrecht said.
Brauchler asks Albrecht whether Holmes acted differently than shy and would Albrecht recall that. He said yes, he would have.
After the final lab, Albrecht said he had no contact with Holmes outside the classroom.
Brauchler calls Jason Tregellas to the stand. Tregellas is a researcher and teacher at the CU medical school, in the department of neuroscience and psychology.
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9:45 a.m.
Tregellas said he sometimes attends classes he doesn’t teach. He said he also teaches certain blocks within this course. In the spring of 2012, Holmes was in a class he taught, and he didn’t notice any attendance issues. Nothing about Holmes sticks out in his mind, Tregellas said.
An e-mail exchange between Holmes and Tregellas is introduced and talks about when Holmes would give his presentation for the class. He said it is normal to communicate via e-mail with students. Nothing out of the ordinary with the Holmes e-mail, Tregellas said.
Judge Samour now reviewing e-mail after defense questions relevance of it.
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10:01 a.m.
Samour overrules objection.
Brauchler said the e-mail subject matter concerns a presentation done at the end of the rotation. Holmes picked micro-RNA biomarkers, used to detect cancer. Tregellas said it was a fairly unremarkable presentation.
Defense attorney Tamara Brady cross-examines Tregellas. She asks him if Holmes was awkward in the biological basis of psychiatric and neurological disorders, and Tregellas said he didn’t recall.
Tregellas said he had no contact with Holmes outside of class. Brady asks whether Trellegas recalls telling an FBI agent whether Holmes marched to a different drummer. He said he may have a hazy memory of that, but doesn’t really recall. He said he told an FBI agent that one of the students who could have been Holmes had some slightly different mannerisms during presentations, but now he doesn’t recall whether it was Holmes.
Brady asks whether instruction involved mental illness in the class. Tregellas said in his seminar there were mentions of mental illness. Different speakers talked about some of those topics, but there were no real talks of delusions, Tregellas said.
Brady asked Tregellas whether he has spoken to Brauchler and he said yes, but never to the defense team. “I just did not have any interest to speaking to either parties,” Trellegas said, who has a CU attorney with him in the courtroom.
Brauchler re-directs. Trellegas said he spoke with Brauchler on the phone, but not in person.
Trellegas said there were two brief video presentation regarding delusions.
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10:43 a.m.
After a 25-minute break, court is back in session and jury being brought back in.
Prosecutor Lisa Teesch-Maguire calls Brenton Lowak, who is a emergency medical technician and firefighter at the scene of the shooting. The day before the shooting, he and Jessica Ghawi, who was shot and killed in the theater shooting, went to the Coors brewery tour, then went back to Ghawi’s house and hung out by the pool. That day, “after much persuasion, she twisted my arm” to go see the midnight release of The Dark Knight Rises. Midnight showing was sold out but they got tickets for the 12:05 a.m. shooting on July 20, 2012.
“It was packed,” he said of the theater. They sat on the 12th row, offset to the right, six to eight seats in, Lowak said.
They watched the previews “having a good time.” About 20 to 30 minutes in, he remembers hearing a hissing noise by an emergency exit. He saw something being hurled across the theater.
There was a brief pause, he recalled, before it hit people. “I was kinda puzzled at first, then the first shot rang out,” Lowak said.
They started to exit the row, then he realized people not moving fast enough so he pushed Ghawi to the ground. “The whole time she was saying call 911, call 911!”
Lowak said they were both facing the right exit. “At that point I started to feel the spray of popcorn and soda all around,” he said. She then started screaming and “I looked down and she had been shot in the right leg.”
Lowak applied pressure to her gunshot wound. He tried to reach for phone in his pocket but couldn’t reach it. He tried to get up and was shot in the right buttocks, Lowak said.
He recalls a loud shot, then a bang and bang. The shots continued, he said. He was able to call 911 but got a busy message. Then he noticed the screaming had stopped and Ghawi was shot in the head.
Lowak then prayed over her after knowing Ghawi wasn’t going to make it. Her injuries were “incompatible with life,” Lowak said. His own survival was his next priority, he said.
He then saw someone run out and no shots were fired so he decided to try to make it out. “The shooter never returned,” Lowak said.
Not very long after, he saw personnel in uniform enter the theater. One of them found him and the officer and another carried him out of the theater.
He remembers seeing bullet casings all over the floor and an assault rifle near the exit.
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10:53 a.m.
Lowak pointing out where the two were in a model of the theater that is at the front of the courtroom. He only saw muzzle flash and silhouette and didn’t see the actual gunshots.
Lowak then calls Ghawi’s mother and told her what happened, then he called his own mother. “There was a lady who had a finger shot off,” Lowak said.
Lowak eventually received medical attention, although as an EMT he did assist other injured people. He was placed in a supply van, four officers carried him to the van. He was able to crawl in the van. He was taken to Colorado Children’s Hospital.
He was taken into surgery after direct pressure wasn’t stopping the bleeding. Doctors performed abdominal surgery, removed shrapnel fragments and sewed him back up. His blood vessels were sewn up. He also had shrapnel in his shoulder. “To this day … I have a clicking sensation in my hip whenever I take a step.” He testifies he has permanent nerve damage and will need additional surgeries.
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11:02 a.m.
A picture of Ghawi is shown on the screen.
No cross-examination. Lowak steps down.
Prosecutor Jacob Edson calls Scott Swanson to the stand. Swanson is a manager for an online security company, Security Pro USA. The company sells bulletproof vests, ballistic helmets, etc. The public may purchase these items online. He is a records custodian for the company. Purchases are handled through Yahoo Small Business.
Swanson is now given an order made on June 28, 2012 and the customer was James Holmes.
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11:19 a.m.
The purchase order is shown on a screen in the courtroom. It shows purchases made with a MasterCard. The total was for $336.99, Swanson testified. The item purchased was a Kevlar helmet made by a company called United Shield. The customer declined the night vision option as well as side rails, according to Swanson. The order was shipped July 11, 2012.
The combat helmet was made of “soft armor,” Swanson said. The prosecution is now showing a picture of that type of helmet.
The witness is allowed to step down.
Prosecutor Karen Pearson calls Brett Mills to the stand. Mills is a an FBI employee at the lab in Quantico, Va. He’s worked with the FBI for 26 years. Mills is a forensic examiner and reviews evidence, including firearms, bullets, gunshot residue, etc. Basically, Mills determines whether a bullet was fired from a specific firearm and he also plots shooting incident reconstructions.
The FBI also helps other agencies with shootings, in addition to FBI-involved shootings.
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11:40 a.m.
Now the prosecution is establishing Mills’ experience in his field, his training, who he teaches, etc. in shooting incident reconstruction. The judge rules that Mills is an expert in shooting reconstruction.
Mills started reconstructing the theater shooting on July 24, 2012. Prosecutor Karen Pearson is taking her time going over how Mills and his team reconstructed the theater shooting, asking him about the difference between bullet holes and impacts.
The judge dismisses the jury early for lunch today because he must attend a meeting.
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1:29 p.m.
Jury returns to court after the lunch break.
Mills’ testimony continues. He says 235 bullet holes or impacts were found in Theater 9. In Theater 8 there were 16 bullet holes or impacts, Mills testifies. Rods are used to gauge the trajectory of the bullets based on the location of holes or impacts of the gunfire, he said.
“We’re there to plot the holes and the trajectories themselves,” he said.
In some cases, the holes were so large a rod could not be used, Mills said.
After the rods were in place, photographs were taken of them, which are being introduced in the trial now.
A photograph is being shown now of Theater 9, from the front to back with labels of the bullet holes and impacts. Second photo shows flags where shotgun patterns are visible on some seats. Now row 8, the first of the stadium seating part is being shown from a side angle with flags showing shotgun patterns.
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1:42 p.m.
Now on the screen is a view of the theater with trajectory rods and lasers sticking out from the walls. The next slide is of seats with rods sticking out of bullet holes.
Mills goes on to say that rods, over longer distances, start to bow so lasers were used to determine trajectories of longer distances.
Another photograph of lasers, from a shooter’s perspective looking out into the theater, is shown to the jury. Lights are green and red, resembling a light show. More of the same types of photos are shown.
Mills said he could tell the firearms used based on the holes and impacts from the gunfire.
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2:05 p.m.
Mills said all the shots were fired from the right front corner of the theater, except for maybe one leading back to the screen. Four of the holes were determined to not have come from bullets, Mills said.
Now entered into evidence is a diagram of trajectories from bullet holes in Theater 9. And next is a diagram of trajectories going from Theater 9 to Theater 8. One skipped off a handrail and hit a wall all the way across Theater 8, he said. The next diagram shows shots from Theater 9 to Theater 8.
Next a diagram shows trajectories entering into Theater 8. More diagrams of bullet trajectories are shown to the jury, including one shot that hit the hand rail and traveled all the way to the other side of Theater 8.
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2:31 p.m.
Jury sees more diagrams of bullet trajectories.
Now a diagram of the seats in Row 11 in Theater 9 is being shown, shotgun patterns between seats 6 and 7. Holmes briefly looked up at the diagram on the screen but now looks forward, almost stoic.
Mills continues describing bullet or shotgun impacts by row, seat by seat.
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2:47 p.m.
Jury goes on afternoon break.
Judge Samour asks whether trial is still on schedule. Edson said prosecution is on schedule now, after being ahead of schedule two weeks ago.
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3:25 p.m.
Back from afternoon break. Mills is cross-examined by defense attorney Katherine Spengler, who asks him to look at notes from his examination of the bullet fragments. He agrees one impact was from a tear in a seat and not a bullet or shotgun.
Mills steps down from the stand.
Prosecutor Rich Orman calls special agent Jeffrey Holmes to the stand. Holmes works for the FBI as a supervisory special agent assigned to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. After the shooting, the agent was part of the evidence response team for the Denver office of the FBI.
The agent went in along with his team to search James Holmes’ apartment for computer and other potential electronic evidence. Jeffrey Holmes said he turned over items he collected to the Aurora Police Department.
On the screen, a picture of a tower computer collected from Holmes’ apartment is shown. The next picture depicts a USB device, a push-to-TV device that was on the top of the computer. The next picture is of a bookcase that stored a tablet computer, which was also turned over to Aurora police.
The next picture is a tower computer system near the other tower computer system. Both towers had been powered off, special agent Holmes said.
Now pictured is a laptop computer in a case with a USB drive from James Holmes’ apartment. It was in the same room as the other computers on a television stand below the TV.
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3:35 p.m.
More pictures are shown from different angles of computer systems inside James Holmes’ apartment.
James Holmes seems more engaged in these photos taken from his apartment, as he continues to look at them unlike he did the diagrams from the theater.
Agent Jeffrey Holmes steps down.
The next witness called by DA George Brauchler is Joan Holley, who owns and manages apartment buildings, including the one at 1690 South Paris Street, where James Holmes lived. Holley said she only leased apartments there from the university.
Brauchler gives her a page of e-mails between Holley and James Holmes.
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3:58 p.m.
Holmes “always paid on time,” Holley said, and in fact, paid ahead of time.
The last rent payment he made was on June 29, 2012 for the month of July, Holley testified.
Holley said she looked at Unit No. 10, and Brauchler asked her to comment on the amount of gas that was in the apartment. Holley said there was a smell but that she didn’t see anything. “Like there had been an explosion in the apartment,” she said.
Unit 6 below Apartment 6, in the dining room area, the ceiling bowed a foot and a half to two feet, Holley said. It had not been like that before she leased the upstairs unit to Holmes, Holley said.
“I called the insurance company and I requested them to do an inspection for gas fumes,” Holley said.
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4:12 p.m.
The jury submits questions for Holley. The first one: Was anyone living in the apartment below Holmes? Yes, Holley said. Second question: Did anyone in the building complain about Holmes? Holley said no.
Holley steps off the stand.
Brauchler now calls Maryalice Arre to testify. She is in the apartment management business and has worked for Holley since August of 2008. Arre leased the apartment on Paris Street to Holmes on April 20, 2011.
She said Holmes was polite and had a “soft demeanor.” She said he was more quiet than talkative and understood everything he filled out in the lease.
Arre said people typically bring their rent to the office and were allowed to use personal checks to do that in that building. Arre said she saw Holmes pay his rent by check “six to eight times at least.” She would chitchat with Holmes from time to time and ask them whether everything was OK in the apartment. “He would say everything was fine,” adding that there was little interaction between the two.
The last time he paid rent, Holmes had changed his hair color to an “orangy-red” and it was more wild, Arre testified. Holmes paid the rent a day or two before it was due, she said.
Brauchler asked Arre if she ever commented to Holmes about his new hairdo, and Arre said she had. “I said James, you’ve changed your hair color. He just said, Oh, yeah. It was not something he made a big deal about.”
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4:29 p.m.
Defense attorney Higgs cross-examines Arre, asking her the ways she described Holmes. Then the jury has questions for Arre. The first question: Did any tenants complain of an odor of gas? No. Second question: Is a six-month term the shortest lease? Yes, Arre said. The final quesiton is whether they have lease options beyond six months or a year, but on that property at times they made exceptions.
Arre steps down.
The next witness is Kevin Campbell, who was at the movie theater at the time of shooting. Campbell said most of that day for before the movie he and his friends were apartment hunting, but they didn’t find anything cheap enough to rent. His friends included Micayla
Medek, who was fatally shot at the theater.
They smuggled snacks and drinks into the movie. Once inside the group walked to the front rows and found some seats in the middle for all of them to sit. But Campbell didn’t want to sit so close so he found a seat higher up from the screen. Medek went with Campbell and
they found some students from Hinkley High that he knew and asked them to move over so the two could sit there.
Campbell said about 10 minutes into the movie he heard a “metally clink” from the floor.
Some people near the front started to leave, but he thought maybe it was a prank or something.
“I remember … starting to hear loud bangs and bright flashes,” Campbell said.
Eventually it started to sound like a shotgun, Campbell said. So he grabbed Medek and took cover on the ground.
“The gunfire was continuing, but I did notice a change in the gunfire sounds, it became more higher pitched,” Campbell said.
He had some training in guns, he said, from citizen police academies and the Boy Scouts.
When they were both on the ground, “it felt for quite a long time.”
The next thing I know I hear Micayla yell, “‘I’m hit!’ That was the last thing I heard from her.”
Someone then pulled Campbell up to the row above. He walked toward the left side of the theater and to the back exit at the top.
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4:46 p.m.
The next witness is Kimber Avra, who was with Campbell, Medek and the others at the movie.
She said they tried to get tickets to another movie through Fandago, but their efforts to purchase them did not go through online.
The friends got to the movie about a half-hour early, but there were a lot of people already there and they couldn’t get decent seats, Avra said. “All the details about what happened are a little fuzzy,” Avra said.
Avra and two others went outside to smoke and returned after the movie started. She said she heard a sound like someone had kicked in the emergency door on the bottom right side of Theater 9.
“I looked over and there was someone there and they were completely covered from head to toe in black,” Arva said. “It almost looked like a costume. He had something in his hand and threw it up and behind us. He pulled a tab or something on it.”
She said she thought it was a prank.
Avra assumed it was a man based on the build of the person in all black.
People started clapping when the person threw the canister, Avra said, then she saw the person with a large gun.
“I was like a deer in the headlights,” she said. “I froze.”
A friend pulled her and told Avra to get down. I ended up almost on top of her. At that point, he was still shooting so they tried to roll under the seats. “We didn’t know what else to do,” Avra said.
Then they decided to crawl out to the edge of the row and her friend, Tara, looked up and tried to see where the shooter was. She decided it was time to run, and they ran under the hallway on the left side of the theater. Avra tripped and fell, and Tara pulled her up and they ran out.
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5:09 p.m.
Avra is now showing on a diagram what she witnessed.
No cross examination, so Avra is released.
Orman calls Tarra Bahl to the stand. She was also in the theater in the early hours of July 20, 2012 and was with Campbell, Medek, Avra and the others. They initially were sitting in the second row. She heard a bang from the emergency door. Bahl said she noticed someone stepping through the doorway.
Then she saw the person throw something in the air. “When it landed it sounded, metallic, hollow,” Bahl said.
That’s when Bahl noticed the person had a gun, a “longer gun,” Bahl said. “He was aiming at the crowd.”
“It was extremely loud within the theater,” Bahl said of the gunfire.
Bahl, like the others, hit the floor when the gunfire started. She said she heard a change in pitch from the gun, but the person was still carrying it the same way. She said the man was in full black gear, including a helmet.
Bahl steps down from the stand.
The jury is sent home for the day.
Judge Samour now is ruling about an objection about the model of the theater being used by the prosecution. Samour said the model now has silver marks on it made by a crime scene investigator, Maria Pettolina. The defense is concerned the marks indicate a target and that the jury could infer the defendant was targeting those seats.
Samour ruled prosecutors can continue to use the model of the theater. But he told them to remove the silver mark from one seat that was torn, not damaged by gunfire.
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175, cillescas@denverpost.com or twitter.com/cillescasdp
