AURORA | Police in June offered to detain James Holmes after he told his psychiatrist that he “fantasized about killing a lot of people,” according to a lawsuit filed Monday against the psychiatrist and University of Colorado.

The psychiatrist, Dr. Lynne Fenton, declined the police offer to put Holmes on a 72-hour psychiatric hold, the lawsuit said, and just over a month later he opened fire on a crowded Aurora movie theater, killing 12 and injuring another 70.

Lawyers for Chantel Blunk, whose husband Jonathan Blunk was killed in the theater, filed the suit Monday in federal court in Denver.

Blunk’s lawsuit is the first against Fenton and the University of Colorado, where Holmes was a neuroscience graduate student and where Fenton worked. Another dozen lawsuits have been filed since the July 20 shooting against the theater’s owners, Cinemark, Inc., accusing the theater of having lax security.

Jacque Montgomery, a spokeswoman for the university, said in a statement Tuesday that the school “has nothing but sympathy for the victims of the Aurora Theater Shooting and their families, but in our initial review of this case, the University believes this lawsuit is not well-founded legally or factually.”

Montgomery said the school has received notice of 11 more possible lawsuits against the university stemming from the theater shootings.

In Monday’s lawsuit, Blunk’s lawyer said Holmes told Fenton on June 11 that he fantasized about killing people.

Fenton told the university’s Campus Wide Threat Assessment Team about the threat. Sometime after that, Officer Lynn Whitten of the CU Police Department at the Anschutz Medical Campus offered to detain Holmes for a 72-hour psychiatric hold. Fenton rejected the idea, the lawsuit said.

Jonathan Blunk, who had two children, was killed inside the theater July 20.

At Holmes’ preliminary hearing last week, prosecutors said he had been planning the rampage since at least May, amassing an arsenal that included an assault rifle, tactical shotgun and two .40-caliber pistols. He also bought body armor and tear gas grenades which he used during the attack, prosecutors said.

Holmes’ lawyers have said he is mentally ill and experts have predicted they will plead not guilty by reason of insanity.