AURORA | City leaders say a study of the response to the July 20 theater rampage may shed light on what first responders in Aurora did right that night, and what they did wrong.
Last week, council gave initial approval for a $248,000 contract with TriData Corp., a company that conducted similar studies after other high-profile mass shootings. The council may give final approval for the bid Feb. 25.
City Manager Skip Noe said after any major event like the theater shooting, local governments want to have a third-party analysis of how the city responded. Those reports become important not just for the city that experienced a mass shooting or other event, but for the rest of the community who can learn from Aurora’s experience, he said.
“It becomes ingrained in how all communities and all municipalities train their police officers and firefighters and set up their institutions to respond,” he said.
The study is expected to take about six months to complete and will likely be very intensive for TriData. In their bid for the project, the company said they expect the report will require about 1,400 man-hours to complete.
City documents said the TriData report will rely in large part on interviews with first responders, as well as interviews with some victims and hospital staff.
City attorney Charlie Richardson said he doesn’t think those interviews will violate a gag order in the criminal case against accused shooter James Holmes. But, Richardson said, whether the subsequent report will be available to the public will likely have to be litigated when the report is complete six months from now.
Nick Muniz, a spokesman for TriData, said the company has conducted more than 50 “after action” studies following major incidents, including after mass shootings at Columbine High School, Virginia Tech University and Northern Illinois University.
Muniz said the company could not comment further on the Aurora report.
In its report on the Columbine High School massacre, TriData said communication between police and fire crews could have been better and encouraged the departments to purchase radio equipment that would improve communication between cops and firefighters.
It also said news helicopters should not be allowed to fly near scenes of mass disasters because they can interfere with first responders’ ability to communicate.
In the Virginia Tech case, a troubled student, Cho Seung-Hui, killed two students in a dormitory before killing another 30 in an academic building two hours later in April 2007.
The Virginia Tech report laid out various failures in Virginia’s mental health system and gun laws. Among those was a loophole that allowed the gunman to purchase two pistols even though he had previously been committed to a mental hospital.
After TriData’s report, Virginia lawmakers closed that loophole.
While the Virginia Tech report looked at various aspects of Virginia law and mental health policies that may have contributed to the massacre, Noe said Aurora’s report won’t have that kind of scope.
“We’re not taking the approach of trying to get a 30,000-foot view of the entire statewide system and how that all worked,” he said.
The report will focus on the first responders, he said.
Aurora City Councilwoman Barb Cleland, who chairs city council’s Public Safety Committee, said it’s vital that the city take a close look at the response to the theater shooting that night.
“I think any time you go through a situation like we did on 7/20, we should have the opportunity to find out what we did very well and maybe some places where we could do a little better,” she said.
Cleland said city council members won’t give TriData specific questions that they want answers to, but city administrators might.
One of the topics the report will look at is how emergency crews responded to the theater that night.
Because of the crush of people fleeing the theater, ambulance crews were not able to get to theater 9 where the shootings occurred until several minutes after the rampage. That forced Aurora police officers to rush some victims to the hospital in their police cruisers.
Cleland said the report will look at that response, but she said it’s hard to criticize the ambulance crews’ response considering the chaos in the parking lot that night.
From court testimony, it’s difficult to say whether a quicker response would have mattered for the 12 people killed in the theater that night.
Only two of the 12 slain were taken to area hospitals and in both cases, police testified in court that they were in grave condition before being rushed from the theater. In the case of 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, police testified that she didn’t have a pulse when they carried her from the theater, but she was rushed to a hospital anyway and pronounced dead there.
In the cases of the other 10 people killed that night, court testimony said they were found dead in or near their seats. One of the victims, John Larimer, was found in an aisle a few feet from his seat. Police testified that Larimer, who was in the Air Force, was at the movie that night with several military friends.
One of those friends told police that after dozens of shots were fired, the group tried to leave but realized Larimer was dead. Not wanting to leave their friend behind, the group tried to carry Larimer out of the theater. But after they carried him from his seat and an aisle, they heard the gunman coming back and had to leave the body.
John Larimer was in the Navy. Get your facts straight.May the Lord Bless him and keep him.