HOLMES008 – Inside and Outside Century 16 During the Batman Massacre

The following is my continued recreation of events inside and outside Century 16 theaters in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, 2012. This recreation was pieced together using hundreds of hours of eyewitness accounts as well as police and fire dispatch recordings at the time of the event. The purpose of the recreation is to point out how the “official story” changed over time and how key pieces of information were suddenly dropped and stopped being reported such that one might conclude there is a cover up going on as to what really happened that night. It is also a look into the mind of a conspiracy theorist and how people such as myself find themselves going down the rabbit hole.

As might be expected, a mass shooting is a very chaotic event. Eye witnesses recalled details in different order, remembered things slightly differently from one another, and/or saw things that may or not may not be their own minds playing tricks on them. I will do my best to present exactly what was said as well as my best guess as to what may or may not have REALLY happened if I have an educated guess.

Eighteen year old Louis Duran said he was in theater nine that night only because he and his friends decided at the last minute to see the new Batman movie after his long shift at a local Chinese restaurant on July 19th.  He and his friends originally selected a different theater but changed their plans last minute because he found cheaper tickets at Century 16. In the early seconds of the shooting, Louis Duran would be hit with shrapnel from an exploding smoke grenade and/or possibly a bullet to the side of his skull which he describes as feeling like being punched in the head.  He fell to the ground bleeding all over the place and called his parents to say his goodbyes.  Fortunately, Louis Duran would survive the shooting.

Eyewitness Silvana Guillen confirms the shooter fired “4 or 5 rounds” (likely unloading the shotgun he started with) before switching guns.  Isaiah Bow hears a short pause in the shooting and believes the shooter is reloading.  Quickly he tries to get his girlfriend and make a run for it but they were blocked by two girls to his right.  Isaiah then jumps over the seats assuming his girlfriend would do the same then stops when he realizes she didn’t follow him. In the chaos Isaiah is looking for his girlfriend when the shooter turns and looks in his direction. Without hesitation Isaiah bolts for the exit. 

With his shotgun now emptied, the shooter transitions from the shotgun to his Smith and Wesson M&P15 semi-automatic assault rifle (a civilian version of the military M-16 assault rifle) and begins firing quickly into the terrified fleeing audience.  The M&P15, it is reported, is fitted with a large 100 round drum magazine full of ammunition.

Christopher Ramos is one of those fleeing moviegoers and is knocked down.  He sees people running everywhere some even running on top of him, kicking him, jumping over him.  He remembers seeing bodies on the ground and freezing in panic, afraid he was going to die.

Twenty eight year old Josh Kelly had just moments ago been watching the movie with his girlfriend of four years when the chaos broke out.  In the frantic scramble of bodies all around him, Josh lost sight of his girlfriend briefly and was unable to find her.  Panicked, Josh hunkered down and called his father Robert Kelly from inside the theater, telling him he’d lost his girlfriend. Robert told his son he was on the way to the theater now.

Tim McGrath in theater eight later recalls during his interview with Jenny Dean Schmidt on the Channel Mom Show that, “…it was very confusing…and even looking back we don’t know if he came in…. because he was like out in the lobby like waiting for people as they were coming out and shooting them….we don’t know if he stepped into our theater and shot…you just don’t know.”

This is a VERY interesting statement and one that raises a lot of question to the official story. Here we have an eye witness in theater eight (next to where the shooting allegedly took place) saying that he and others cannot escape theater eight because there is a shooter out in the theater lobby waiting for people to come out and shooting them. In fact, he believes its possible the shooter stepped into their theater as well. Already then there is confusion as to how many shooters there are. Was there a shooter in theater nine AND a second shooter in the lobby keeping people from fleeing theater eight? Note also that many moviegoers reported trying to escape via an emergency exit near the front screen in theater eight and found that the door was locked. These exits should NEVER be locked due to fire safety. It is almost as if someone trapped moviegoers in theater eight so no one could exit either via the lobby or the exit doors near the screen. IF that was the case, they would be little more than fish in a barrel. And, because theater eight and nine are adjoined via a walkway up top, the shooter in theater nine could freely move in and out of both theaters without exiting out into the hall or lobby. For now I ask you to just file this away in your memory bank as we need further information to establish a theory of what exactly happened here.

As you may remember, just moments ago, Isaiah Bow narrowly escaped the shooter’s attention when the shooter looked at him as he was trying to escape with his girlfriend.  Realizing now that she didn’t follow him and refusing to leave her behind, Isaiah now comes back into the theater again on the left side entrance from the lobby to continue looking for his girlfriend. Eyewitness Paul Ottermat who was on the left side of the theater sees Isaiah running past him back into the theater as he himself was crawling to the exit near the hallway on the left side.

Derek Poag is sitting in theater nine in the far top right section of the theater in the “two seater section”.  The shooter is using the assault rifle now and walking toward him.  The high velocity rounds are being fired constantly, one right after another. The sickening sound rounds being fired one after another can be heard in the background of multiple 911 calls. The rounds are relentlessly being fired as quickly as the finger could pull the trigger.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

The shooter starts to climb the stairs now toward Derek Poag, getting 15-20 feet away from him at one point.  Brandon Axelrod and Denise Traynom were sitting in the upper level seating in theater nine.  They quickly duck down behind the seats as people are trying to escape.  During the hail fire of bullets, Denise Traynom was struck by a bullet in her rear end.  Brandon Axelrod would sustain significant orthopedic injuries to his right knee and ankle, presumably from being trampled, while trying to avoid becoming a casualty himself.

From down below on the floor in the front rows Jennifer Seeger looks back terrified as the shooter heads up the stairs next to the hallway to the lobby and she contemplates making a run for it.

According to Katie Medly and her friend Ashley Kurz, they were crouched on the ground in their row as the shooter walked right past them and out toward the hallway leading to the lobby.  Katie remembered being terrified for a moment that the shooter was going to go row by row killing people. Instead the shooter seemed to exit the theater toward the lobby but she wasn’t entirely sure.  People near her in the theater immediately began making a run for the exits now that the shooter had moved away from them.

Carey Rottman tells his friend Pierce O’Farrill who is laying on the floor next to him that they have to run now and get out.  Pierce O’Farrill does not respond.  Carey Rottman claims at this time he thought his friend was dead.  In a split-second decision he decides to bolt for the exit and leave his friend behind.  Pierce O’Farrill, however, would not be dead but rather frozen in fear and is left behind.

Sometime during the early onslaught of bullets, Jessica Ghawi would take a bullet to the head and leg.  In a crazy bit of coincidence, just a year prior, Jessica had narrowly avoided being involved in a mass shooting in Canada just before a shooter opened fire at a food court where she had been eating.  This time Jessica would not be so lucky.  She would succumb to her wounds and die.  She was 24 years old.

In the theater next door, theater eight, twenty year old Meghan Walton of Boulder, Colorado is sitting with a group of ten other members from the Friends: Association of Young People who Stutter.  As she is sitting beside her eighteen year old friend Gage Hankins from Ohio, she remembers vividly when he was suddenly shot in the arm. Meghan notices that there is a whole lot of smoke in the isle and sees three of four bullets shot near the smoke. Meghan Walton flees theater eight with her friend Gage Hankins who has been shot. She is holding onto his arm and can feel heat against her skin.  Her eyes were blurred by the smoke and she sees the room in chaos. People are crying hysterically in theater eight and as the two make their escape she counts at least twelve people who were bleeding.

In theater eight, some witnesses recall, a message is now playing over the theater’s house speakers saying “emergency in the theater”. 

Rachel Fedeli in theater eight sees a group of people just huddled together near the front screen. 

In theater nine Jennifer Seeger had been suggesting to those around her that they wait for the shooter to move before they try and make a run for it.  For a brief moment she remembers the shooter moved up the right side of the theater away from them and then starts moving toward the left side of the theater and disappears from her view.  This was their big moment and Jennifer along with some of those around her get up and bolted for the hallway on the right side intending to exit out through the lobby.  As they are running towards the lobby Jennifer notices dead bodies lying all over place, on the stairs and draped lifelessly over chairs.  Just as Jennifer starts for the exit hallway however she sees someone come running back into the theater nine from the lobby on the right side yelling at everyone to get back inside because there was a shooter out in the lobby shooting people trying to exit. 

This now is eyewitness reports from two different people in both theater eight and nine saying a second shooter is in the lobby shooting people trying to exit. And, like in theater eight, people are encouraged to get back in the theater rather than try and escape. Next door in theater eight Quintin Caldwell also hears someone yelling at people in their auditorium not to leave because a shooter was in the lobby. 

Faced with the possibility of another shooter in the lobby, Jennifer Seeger and her friends were suddenly forced to return back to theater nine to take cover and watch helplessly as Jennifer says the shooter re-entered from the lobby into the right side theater exit they had just tried to escape.  It is important to note here that the single shooter may have exited theater nine briefly into the hall or lobby and returned to theater nine again. This brief period MAY sufficiently account for why patrons in both theater eight and nine reported a shooter in the lobby when in fact it may still be the same single shooter. Still, one cannot ignore that multiple shooters are being reported at this time even if it’s simply confusion and chaos that is making it APPEAR like there are multiple shooters.

Gun fire erupted again and Katie Medley remembered people just falling to the ground either from being hit or trying to desperately take cover.

Katie Medley looked around her and noticed a young man of around eighteen or so laying on the ground with someone else on top of him. She remembers the two staring at each other terrified.  Katie then told her friend Ashley to call 911 but Ashley responded that she could hear other people calling 911 all over the theater so there was no need.

Jennifer would later go on national television’s “Good Morning America” and recall how a single shooter had exited theater nine briefly only to wait outside the doors and pick off patrons as they tried to leave. Again, this may be the simple explanation for why multiple shooters were reported early on. However, this is FAR from the last report of multiple shooters.

Sometime after the shooter returned to the theater from the lobby, several witnesses claim his gun malfunctioned or jammed and he just suddenly stopped shooting.  Christopher Ramos, an eyewitness in theater nine, recalls vividly the shooting kept going on for a minute and a half to two minutes and then suddenly just stopped.  Christopher then says for some strange reason unbeknownst to him the shooter stopped but did not leave the theater. Instead, he just stood there.  Christopher couldn’t explain why the shooter was just standing there at the time..  At that point, several witness claim the shooter then calmly left the theater through the same emergency exit near the right front of the theater he had come in from. 

Katie Medley also remembered the shooting going quiet and she chanced standing up to examine her husband more closely.  Astonishingly Caleb was breathing again as noted by the fact that he was audibly choking on his own blood.  Grabbing a bottled water they had purchased earlier Katie attempted to wash the blood from her husband’s face as police began barging into the theater through the same exit door the shooter had first arrived. 

Note at this point that police enter the theater through the very door the shooter arrived initially and the door he later exited from (the exit door near the front of the screen in theater nine). Did they pass each other in the hallway? More on that later.

Katie remembers hearing the police yelling and screaming at people to come to the exit door to get out of the theater.  It should be noted that although the shooter had just exited through this very door and was arrested moments later behind the theater there is no police dispatch recording that captures this moment on audio.  To my knowledge no audio recording of the officers at the back of the theater have surfaced describing the scene Katie remembers at this moment. When the officers see the shooter, as captured on audio for example, no sounds of police yelling for people to get out can be heard.  More on that later.

While the shooting was still actively going, the police dispatch’s calm female dispatcher continues to radio in information to the graveyard patrol units of the Aurora Police Department by their patrol numbers, “315 and 314 there is at least one person that has been shot but they are saying there are just hundreds of people running around.”

Much of the radio chatter back and forth over the next couple of hours is relatively unimportant.  It contains simple logistics such as which cars are responding, what fire and police apparatus are on the way, how many victims are being reported and where they are being routed, etc.  Rather than bog down our analysis with every single transmission word for word, this blog will focus only on the key points and time markers used throughout the remainder of this recreation.  Full audio recordings of that evenings police and fire dispatch channels are still widely available via the internet if you should ever want to review what is being omitted here or to verify the time markers I’ve presented. 

At this point the Aurora PD dispatcher calls for all available units to respond to the theater.  It is still 12:39 am and the shooting is still in progress.

At just a little over one minute after the first 911 calls start coming in, the Aurora Fire Department starts getting dispatched to the scene as well. The following transmission is received on air and relayed over the internet via streaming audio.  The voice is that of a female dispatcher on Aurora fire channels calling to Engine eight.

“Engine Eight, Battalion One on a shooting…nine George two…Century theaters, fourteen three hundred East Alameda Avenue….across from South Abilene.”.  

Throughout the majority of this recreation Engine Eight will act as the on-scene fire chief until he is relieved of duty near the end of our analysis.  The actions of Engine Eight will, under critical examination, play a very interesting and perhaps key role in the conspiracy theory that unfolded in the months following the shooting. As you read this blog, pay particular attention to the actions of the fire chief from Engine Eight. 

It should be pointed out early on that Engine Eight will use three different names for itself during the early morning hours of the shooting.  At first they are simply referred to as Engine Eight, the first engine to arrive on scene.  Later they will take command of the fire scene and will be referred to as “Century Command”.  As Century command they will coordinate the efforts of other fire apparatus arriving on scene in the very early stages of the event.  Later still, Century Command will state on air they are changing their name to “Aurora Mall Command”.  This last change will come at a very interesting and key point in the conspiracy theory so pay attention for it when it comes.

About one and a half minutes after the first 911 calls start coming in, the Aurora PD dispatcher gives an update, “Somebody is still shooting inside theater nine, per an employee.” 

Keep in mind that following the shooting, law enforcement officials including the Aurora, Colorado Chief of Police himself, Dan Oates claimed the shooter was apprehended in about a “minute to a minute and a half after the shooting started.”  Dan Oates reported this at his first press conference around 3:15 am local time and also again at 11:30 am later the same day. Additionally, he and other police and media reports would claim the first officer was on the scene within 90 seconds of the first 911 call and there was a police car on the back side of the theater by 12:41 am (under two minutes).  In other words, according to early official reports it is right about this time in the police and fire dispatch audio that Holmes was already detained. However, according to the time markers on the police and fire dispatch, the dispatcher is reporting the suspect is “still shooting”.