Sometime late Thursday, Alex Sullivan posted on his Facebook page: “#TheDarkKnightRises OMG COUNTING down till it start cant wait going to be the best birthday ever.”
Sullivan died on his 27th birthday. He and co-workers from a Red Robin restaurant had gone to the premiere. Sullivan was killed, and seven co-workers were injured.
Sunday would have been Sullivan’s one-year wedding anniversary. Recently, he wrote on his Facebook page: “Just took the wife to DIA going to be gone for 3 and a half weeks going to miss her a lot. I love you cassie.”
Cassandra Sullivan returned home Wednesday.
The morning of the shooting, Alex Sullivan’s father, Tom, showed his picture around and asked if anybody had seen his son, an image that reminded some of 9/11 and grieving people amid that tragedy.
Friends on Saturday talked about the big-hearted, good-humored guy they knew.
Derek Smith, who worked with Sullivan at Red Robin on South Havana Street, said the two were movie buffs.
“In ‘Animal House,’ there’s a part when they go to the bar and one of the guys screams across the bar, ‘Hey, Otis!’ ” Smith said. “When I walked in, it was always, ‘Hey, Otis!’ No one knew what it meant, but because we’re both into movies we got a kick out of it.
“Ah, man, I’m going to miss that dude, I really am,” Smith said, his eyes welling with tears.
Bryan Beard first met Sullivan during their freshman year at Grandview High School.
“We just clicked,” Beard said. “We’re both big guys, and big guys stick together.”
Beard said Sullivan stood 6 feet 4 inches and weighed about 280 pounds. He played football and wrestled before graduating from high school in 2003 and later going to culinary school, Beard said.
Maneka Singh, another high school friend, said Sullivan was “always smiling and the type of guy who had too many friends and loved them all.”
“I’m just trying in a way to make sense of all of this. I don’t know that you can really even do that,” she said. “Why a movie theater? Why so many innocent people?”
