Gruesome photos and recounting by police end first week of Aurora theater shooting trial

CENTENNIAL | Several Aurora police officers who piled bloodied victims into their police cruisers and sped to area hospitals on July 20, 2012, detailed the horror they witnessed that night for jurors Thursday, wrapping up a week of emotional and often gruesome testimony.

Prosecutors showed jurors graphic crime scene photos in the Aurora theater shooting trial, the first time images of the bloodshed were made public since the  attack.

One juror briefly turned his head after looking at one of the photos displayed on a video screen. Most jurors studied the images intently but showed no emotion.

Some spectators in the gallery wept. A woman broke down in sobs and left the courtroom.

Twelve people were killed and 70 injured in attack at the Century 16 theater in  Aurora. Ten victims died at the theater, while the other two were pronounced dead at hospitals.

If James Holmes — who has admitted he was the shooter — felt any reaction to the photos, it wasn’t visible. He watched from the defense table, where he is tethered to the floor by a harness and cable under his street clothes.

The photos could not be seen on a video feed made available to news organizations, which are sharing it online.

It was a grim ending to the first short week of the trial, which won’t resume until Monday to accommodate plans that one juror made before the case got underway.

The photos added still more emotional weight to the prosecution’s case.

Since testimony began Tuesday, jurors have heard victims describe the burning pain of gunshot wounds and the agony of watching loved ones collapse before their eyes.

Police officers — some so overwhelmed by grief they had to pause to pull themselves together — described rushing to hospitals with gasping victims in their patrol cars.

Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to multiple counts of murder and attempted murder.

Defense attorneys say his mind is so distorted by schizophrenia that he didn’t know right from wrong. If the jury finds he was insane, he would be committed indefinitely to the state mental hospital.

Prosecutors have described Holmes as calculating and smart, and they say he believed killing others increased his self-worth. They are asking jurors to convict him of murder and sentence him to be executed.

Police officers testified Thursday that Holmes seemed keenly interested in the attack’s aftermath, peering out the window of a squad car as injured victims were treated nearby.

He first wore a vacant expression and seemed calm and detached — but sweaty and smelly — after police handcuffed him in the parking lot behind the theater, the officers said.

But when they placed him in the police car near a back door to the theater, “he would look around like he was taking it all in,” Aurora police officer Jason Oviatt said.

It was a tumultuous scene, with emergency responders treating the wounded and loading them into police cars to be rushed to hospitals because no ambulances had arrived.

“He would sort of look around whenever a car went speeding past or when there was something else going on, somebody shouting outside the car,” Oviatt said.

Prosecutors called four law-enforcement officers as witnesses Thursday. For the first time since testimony began, the defense cross-examined some of them.

Questioned by defense lawyer Daniel King, the officers said Holmes had disheveled, reddish-orange hair, that his pupils were extremely dilated and that he appeared disoriented and stared off into space when he was first arrested.

King’s questions mirrored an argument the defense made in opening statements — that Holmes’ behavior was shaped by his mental illness.

Holmes’ mother, Arlene, attempted to pass a note to the defense table from her seat nearby in the gallery Thursday, but a deputy intercepted it.

Arlene Holmes then left the courtroom with her husband, Bob, and defense attorney Tamara Brady. It wasn’t clear what the note said or why they left.

Aurora police Officer Justin Grizzle — who rushed six victims to two different hospitals across four high-speed trips from the theater — told the jury the scene in the theater that night was a “nightmare.”

Grizzle said he almost fell down on a pool of blood at the emergency exit and when he gathered himself, quickly tried to help anyone he could, turning victims onto their sides so they didn’t aspirate or helping them sit up so they could breathe.

Still, Grizzle said, many were already dead.

“Some you just knew were dead and there was no point in checking,” he said.
One of those was 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, who Grizzle, fighting back tears, said he had to jump over to get to other victims who still had a chance to survive.

“The one I will always remember is the little girl,” he said.

Grizzle said he then went outside and started shuttling victims to the hospital in his police cruiser.

The first people he rushed to the hospital were Moser-Sullivan’s mom, Ashley Moser, and her boyfriend, Jamison Toews. Grizzle said both were seriously hurt and Toews tried to jump from the speeding car so he could go back and find his daughter.

That’s when Grizzle said he realized the little girl he jumped over was the girl Toews was screaming about.

“I just wanted to tell him, ‘she’s gone, she’s gone,’ but I couldn’t do it,” he said.
Grizzle also rushed Caleb Medley to University of Colorado Hospital. Medley, who was shot in the head and lost his eye, sat in a wheelchair in the courtroom listening to Grizzle’s testimony.

Grizzle drove another three people to the hospital, but he said they were so covered in blood he didn’t know anything about them.

“I didn’t know race, color, creed or sex,” he said.

During previous testimony, Grizzle has said he could hear blood from the victims sloshing around the floor boards of his car when he finally left the hospital, but jurors didn’t hear that comment Thursday. The defense, which has objected to some graphic testimony, objected before Grizzle could say what he heard in the car or describe the car’s condition and Judge Carlos Samour, Jr. agreed with them.

Aurora Officer Jason Oviatt, the first witness called Thursday, said he was in a parking lot just 20 feet from James Holmes when he realized Holmes was involved in the attack.

Oviatt said he first thought Holmes was another officer because he wore a gas mask and helmet, and police had been warned to wear masks because of gas inside.

Holmes sat quietly at the defense table during all of the testimony.