AURORA | Jurors in the Aurora theater shooting trial Tuesday watched a video of James Holmes detailing how he “geared up” outside the Aurora Century 16 theater — and how he went on “auto pilot” as he walked in July 20, 2012.
During the 2014 interview with psychiatrist Dr. William Reid at a state mental hospital, Holmes said he mostly just fired into the crowd, not aiming at specific people other than two people who tried to run from the theater. Those people, Holmes said, he targeted.
“It made me kind of focus on them or divert my attention to them, because I can’t have everybody running away from the scene,” he said.
The details about the shooting came during the fourth consecutive day jurors have watched portions of 22 hours of interviews Holmes had with Reid. Prosecutors are expected to finish the video Thursday.
Throughout the interview, Holmes gave short answers and Reid often tried to get him to elaborate. In detailing what he called his “mission” in the theater that night, Holmes spoke in a matter-of-fact fashion about his preparation for the shooting and his movements inside the theater.
Holmes said the drive from his apartment on Paris Street to the theater that night was difficult because he had covered the windows in his Hyundai Tiburon with heavy tint so nobody would see him getting ready in the parking lot. Still, with a car full of guns, ammunition, tear gas canisters and body armor, Holmes said he was calm as he drove to the theater.
“I wasn’t very nervous. I was prepared,” he said.
He said he had bought three different tickets to the movie in an effort to get a seat in theater No. 9, which he had chosen as the ideal auditorium for the shooting after weeks of reconnaissance at the theater. But even after three attempts, he said he only got tickets in theater No. 8.
When he went into the theater, Holmes said he just walked into theater No. 9 anyway.
The theater was crowded when he got in, he said.
“I looked back in the stands and saw that they were all full,” he said.
He took a seat near the front then acted like he got a phone call and walked out an emergency exit, slapping a clip on the door to make sure it wouldn’t close all the way behind him.
Once outside, as he donned the body armor and gas mask, he called a University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus switchboard number that would connect him to his psychiatrist. He said he couldn’t hear anyone on the other line, so he hung up.
Even if he talked to someone on the other line and they tried to talk him out of the shooting, Holmes said he likely would have gone through with it anyway. He said one part of him wanted him to scrap his plans, but that part was small compared to his desire to go through with it.
When he started shooting, Holmes said he was on “auto pilot” and didn’t feel anything. He said he heard only one scream, citing techno music playing on full volume in wireless ear buds drowning out noise from the attack.
He said he fired the shotgun six times, then used the AR-15 rifle until the 100-round drum magazine jammed. After that, Holmes said he ran toward the main entrance to theater No. 9 where there was more light to try to fix the weapon, but he couldn’t get it to work. He fired a pistol a few times then went back out the emergency exit door.
The shootings left 12 dead and 70 wounded.
Holmes told Reid when he left the theater he wasn’t sure how bad the carnage was.
“I wasn’t sure I’d actually killed anybody at that time,” he said, adding he assumed he had killed maybe three people and wounded 20 others.
Holmes also told Reid he did not think of himself as a warrior “because the people I was shooting were unarmed,” but that he expected people would take notice of him in some way.
“At least I’m remembered as doing something,” he said.
Holmes told Reid he experienced some hallucinations and believed the president was speaking to him through a TV at the jail, but those thoughts came after the shooting only.
Reid said the fact that Holmes wanted to be remembered doesn’t tell him much, but it does say Holmes believed there would be people to remember him so he didn’t believe the world was going to end. Reid reiterated that he thinks Holmes had the capacity to tell right from wrong at the time of the shootings.