Shooting suspect in court with orange-red hair

CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) — A for­mer doc­toral stu­dent accused of going on a deadly shoot­ing ram­page at a show­ing of the new Bat­man movie appeared in court for the first time on Mon­day, but he didn’t seem to be there at all.

James Holmes shuf­fled into court with his hands cuffed and his brown hair dyed orange-red — the first look the world got of the 24-year-old since the Fri­day shoot­ing that left 12 peo­ple dead and 58 oth­ers injured at a packed mid­night screen­ing of “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Unshaven and appear­ing dazed, Holmes sat vir­tu­ally motion­less in a maroon jail­house jump­suit, his eyes droop­ing as the judge advised him of the sever­ity of the case. At one point, Holmes sim­ply closed his eyes.

He didn’t say a word. His attor­neys did all the talk­ing when the judge asked if he under­stood his rights.

Pros­e­cu­tors said later they didn’t know if Holmes was on med­ica­tion. Author­i­ties have said he is being held in iso­la­tion at the jail. Holmes’ demeanor appeared to anger the rel­a­tives of some of the vic­tims who attended the hear­ing. One woman’s eyes welled up with tears.

The hear­ing was also the first con­fir­ma­tion that Holmes’ hair was col­ored. Soon after the shoot­ing, there were reports of his hair being red and that he called him­self “The Joker” when he was arrested. “The Joker” is one of Batman’s ene­mies in the fic­tional Gotham and has brightly col­ored hair.

It was not imme­di­ately known if he told offi­cers that he was Batman’s neme­sis, however.

Inves­ti­ga­tors also found a Bat­man mask inside Holmes’ apart­ment after they fin­ished clear­ing the home of booby traps, a law enforce­ment offi­cial close to the inves­ti­ga­tion said Sun­day on con­di­tion of anonymity because he was not autho­rized to speak to the news media.

Holmes, whom police say was clad in body armor and armed with an assault rifle, a shot­gun and hand­guns dur­ing the attack, was arrested shortly after in the park­ing lot. He is refus­ing to coop­er­ate, author­i­ties said. They said it could take months to learn what prompted the attack.

Holmes was brought over from the Ara­pa­hoe County deten­tion facil­ity and walked into the court­room with attor­neys and oth­ers. He sat down in a jury box, seated next to one of his attor­neys. His entrance was barely notice­able but rel­a­tives of shoot­ing vic­tims leaned for­ward in their seats to catch their first glimpse of him.

Some stared at him the entire hear­ing, includ­ing Tom Teves, whose son, Alex, was killed in the shoot­ing. Two women held hands tightly, one shak­ing her head.

After the hear­ing, pros­e­cu­tor Carol Cham­bers said that “at this point, every­one is inter­ested in a fair trial with a just out­come for every­body involved.” Cham­bers said ear­lier her office is con­sid­er­ing pur­su­ing the death penalty against Holmes. She said a deci­sion will be made in con­sul­ta­tion with vic­tims’ families.

David Sanchez, who waited out­side the cour­t­house dur­ing Holmes’ hear­ing, said his preg­nant daugh­ter escaped unin­jured but her hus­band was shot in the head and was in crit­i­cal condition.

“When it’s your own daugh­ter and she escaped death by mere sec­onds, I want to say it makes you angry,” Sanchez said. He said his daugh­ter, 21-year-old Katie Medely, and her hus­band, Caleb, 23, had been wait­ing for a year to watch the movie.

Asked what pun­ish­ment Holmes should get if con­victed, Sanchez said, “I think death is.”

His daugh­ter was sched­uled to deliv­er­ing her baby on Monday.

Holmes is expected to be for­mally charged next Mon­day. Holmes is being held on sus­pi­cion of first-degree mur­der, and he could also face addi­tional counts of aggra­vated assault and weapons vio­la­tions. Holmes has been assigned a pub­lic defender.

Secu­rity at the hear­ing was tight. Uni­formed sheriff’s deputies were sta­tioned out­side, and deputies were posi­tioned on the roofs of both court build­ings at the Ara­pa­hoe County Jus­tice Center.

Police have said Holmes began buy­ing guns at Denver-area stores nearly two months before Friday’s shoot­ing and that he received at least 50 pack­ages in four months at his home and at school.

Holmes’ apart­ment was filled with trip wires, explo­sive devices and unknown liq­uids, requir­ing police, FBI offi­cials and bomb squad tech­ni­cians to evac­u­ate sur­round­ing build­ings while spend­ing most of Sat­ur­day dis­abling the booby traps.

Offi­cials at the Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado Anschutz Med­ical Cam­pus were look­ing into whether Holmes used his posi­tion in a grad­u­ate pro­gram to col­lect haz­ardous mate­ri­als, but that dis­clo­sure was one of the few it has made three days after the mas­sacre. It remained unclear whether Holmes’ pro­fes­sors and other stu­dents at his 35-student Ph.D. pro­gram noticed any­thing unusual about his behavior.

His rea­sons for quit­ting the pro­gram in June also remained a mys­tery. Holmes recently took an intense oral exam that marks the end of the first year. Uni­ver­sity offi­cials would not say if he passed, cit­ing pri­vacy concerns.

Amid the con­tin­u­ing inves­ti­ga­tion of Holmes and his back­ground, Sun­day was a day for heal­ing and remem­brance in Aurora, with the com­mu­nity hold­ing a prayer vigil and Pres­i­dent Barack Obama arriv­ing to visit with fam­i­lies of the victims.

Obama said he told the fam­i­lies that “all of Amer­ica and much of the world is think­ing about them.” He met with them at the Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado Hos­pi­tal in Aurora, which treated 23 of the peo­ple injured in the mass shoot­ing; 10 remain there, seven hurt critically.

Con­gre­ga­tions across Col­orado prayed for the shoot­ing vic­tims and their rel­a­tives. Elderly church­go­ers at an aging Pres­by­ter­ian church within walk­ing dis­tance near Holmes’ apart­ment joined in prayer, though none had ever met him.

Sev­eral thou­sand gath­ered for heal­ing at the vigil Sun­day night.

“You’re not alone, and you will get through it,” said the Rev. Ken­neth Berve, pas­tor at Grant Avenue United Methodist Church and a wit­ness to Friday’s hor­rors. “We can’t let fear and anger take con­trol of us.”

Mean­while, the owner of a gun range told the AP that Holmes applied to join the club last month but never became a mem­ber because of his behav­ior and a “bizarre” mes­sage on his voicemail.

Holmes emailed an appli­ca­tion to join the Lead Val­ley Range in Byers on June 25 in which he said he was not a user of ille­gal drugs or a con­victed felon, said owner Glenn Rotkovich. When Rotkovich called to invite him to a manda­tory ori­en­ta­tion the fol­low­ing week, Rotkovich said he heard a mes­sage on Holmes’ voice­mail that was “bizarre — gut­tural, freak­ish at best.”

Rotkovich left two other mes­sages but even­tu­ally told his staff to watch out for Holmes at the July 1 ori­en­ta­tion and not to accept him into the club, Rotkovich said.

The pas­tor for the suspect’s fam­ily recalled a shy boy who was dri­ven to suc­ceed academically.

“He wasn’t an extro­vert at all. If there was any con­ver­sa­tion, it would be because I ini­ti­ated it, not because he did,” said Jer­ald Borgie, senior pas­tor of Penas­qui­tos Lutheran Church. Borgie said he never saw the sus­pect min­gle with oth­ers his age at church. He last spoke with Holmes about six years ago.

“He had some goals. He wanted to suc­ceed, he wanted to go out, and he wanted to be the best,” Borgie said. “He took pride in his aca­d­e­mic abil­i­ties. A good stu­dent. He didn’t brag about it.”

Dur­ing the attack early Fri­day, Holmes allegedly set off gas can­is­ters and used a semi­au­to­matic rifle, a shot­gun and a pis­tol to open fire on theater-goers, Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said.

Holmes had bought the weapons at local gun stores in the past two months. He recently bought 6,000 rounds of ammu­ni­tion over the Inter­net, the chief said.

The gunman’s semi­au­to­matic assault rifle jammed dur­ing the attack, forc­ing him to switch to another gun with less fire­power, a fed­eral law enforce­ment offi­cial told The Asso­ci­ated Press. That mal­func­tion and weapons switch might have saved some lives.

Oates said a 100-round ammu­ni­tion drum was found in the the­ater, but he said he didn’t know whether it jammed or emptied.

The shoot­ing was the worst in the U.S. since the Nov. 5, 2009, attack at Fort Hood, Texas. An Army psy­chi­a­trist was charged with killing 13 sol­diers and civil­ians and wound­ing more than two dozen others.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jul 23 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.