AURORA | Jurors in the Aurora theater shooting trial heard more about what police found in James Holmes’ apartment during testimony Thursday.
Aurora police Detective Tom Wilson said officers found a piece of poster board between Holmes’ refrigerator and trash can that had the same No. 1 with an infinity symbol on it that police also found on a calendar in his bedroom. On the calendar, the symbol was written on July 20, the day of the theater attack.
The same symbol appeared in a notebook Holmes mailed to his therapist the day of the attack.
The jury also heard Thursday from two people who were inside the theater that night.
Lauren Shuler was in the Navy at the time and stationed at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora. She said she went to the movie with a group of five friends, which included John Larimer. Larimer was one of 12 killed in the theater that night.
Shuler said when the gas canister went off she thought it was a promotion for the movie.
“I thought it was something for the midnight showing, something special,” she said.
She was hit by shrapnel during the chaos and said she had to step over a body on her way out of the theater.
“There were tons of bodies down the rows, down the stairs,” she said. “There was just chaos.”
Shirley Clark, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, cried as she told the jury about the massacre.
“I just remember everybody screaming and crying,” she said.
The prosecution later introduced dozens of items as evidence of Holmes’ occupancy of his former apartment on Paris Street in Aurora. Documents examined included Holmes’ California unemployment filing, vehicle registration and various forms tied to his enrollment at the University of Colorado.
Evan Farris and his fianceé Richelle Hill both testified in the second half of the morning session detailing what happened in theater nine on July 20, 2012. Hill described being face to face with a moviegoer who had been shot while she was on the ground of the theater, ducking for cover from the barrage of bullets.
“The woman beside me was just lying on the ground with blood all around her and she was not moving,” Hill said tearfully from the witness stand.
Farris sustained a hairline fracture in his ankle and a torn tendon in his leg after it was trampled on. Hill suffered a pinched nerve, injuries to her head and left elbow, and slipped three discs in her back during the scramble for the exit. Both Farris and Hill wore rubber bracelets with the yellow and black Batman logo on their wrists.
The morning concluded with testimony from Fabio Serafini, senior director of customer service for movie ticket purchase service Fandango. He detailed the three transactions Holmes’ made on July 13, 17 and 19, 2012 for three tickets to the midnight showing of The Darnknight Rises on July 20.
The jury asked several clarifying questions of Serafini’s testimony, primarily in regard to which theater at The Century 16 complex the tickets Holmes’ purchased were for. All three tickets were for theater eight — not theater nine, where the attack occurred.