Theatre gunman raised red flags.
Bizarre voice mail greeting led to gun range membership denial
AURORA, COLO. – Shooting suspect James Holmes applied to join a Colorado gun range last month but never became a member because of his behaviour and a “bizarre” message on his voice mail greeting, the range’s owner said Sunday.
Holmes, 24, 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.
But when Rotkovich called to invite him to a mandatory orientation the following week, he said he heard Holmes’ voice mail greeting that was “bizarre — guttural, freakish at best.”
It identified the number as belonging to “James,” so Rotkovich said he left a message.
He 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. His comments were first reported by Fox News.
“There’s something weird here,” Rotkovich said he concluded.
Holmes is being held without bond on suspicion of multiple counts of first-degree murder after a shooting rampage minutes into a première of the new Batman film The Dark Knight Rises early Friday that left 12 people dead and 58 wounded. He is scheduled for an initial hearing Monday and has been assigned a public defender.
President Barack Obama left Washington for Colorado on Sunday to visit with the families of victims. The city of Aurora planned a vigil to remember the dead and wounded in the shooting later in the evening.
The gunman’s semi-automatic assault rifle jammed during the attack at the Aurora movie theatre, forcing him to switch to another gun with less firepower, a federal law enforcement official told The Associated Press. That malfunction and weapons switch during the shooting rampage might have saved some lives.
As the investigation into the massacre continued Sunday, the University of Colorado said it was looking into whether Holmes used his position as a graduate student to order materials in the potentially deadly booby traps that police said they found in his apartment.
Holmes got deliveries over four months to his home and school, authorities have said. The university is looking into what was received at the school to assist police with their investigation, said spokeswoman Jacque Montgomery.
The suspect was described as a budding scientist, brimming with potential, who pursued a graduate program even as he planned the attack with “calculation and deliberation,” police said.
Holmes’ apartment was booby trapped with jars of liquids, explosives and chemicals that could have killed “whoever entered it,” Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said, noting it would have likely been one of his officers.
Investigators spent hours removing the explosive materials Saturday.
Inside the apartment, bomb technicians neutralized a “hypergolic mixture” and an improvised explosive device containing an unknown substance, said James Yacone, an FBI special agent. There also were containers of accelerants, creating “an extremely dangerous environment,” he said.
Oates said on CBS television’s Face the Nation that he had never seen a booby trap as elaborate as what was found in the apartment.
By late Saturday afternoon, all hazards had been removed from the apartment and residents in surrounding buildings were allowed to return home, police said.
The exception was Holmes’ apartment building, where authorities were still collecting evidence. Authorities covered the windows of Holmes’ apartment with black plastic to prevent anyone from seeing in. Before they did, a man in an Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms agent T-shirt could be seen measuring a poster on a closet that advertised a DVD called Soldiers of Misfortune. The poster showed several figures in various positions playing paintball, some wearing masks.
Police left the apartment building carrying a laptop computer and a hard drive about 8 p.m. Saturday.
Congregations across Colorado prayed for the shooting victims and their relatives. Churches sent out socialmedia appeals for neighbours who wanted to join in remembrance. Elderly churchgoers at an aging Presbyterian church within walking distance near Holmes’ apartment joined in prayer, though none had ever met him.
Among the dead was a sixyear-old girl and a man who died on his 27th birthday and a day before his wedding anniversary. Families grieved and waited at hospitals, which reported at least seven people still in critical condition as of Sunday.
While authorities continued to refuse to discuss a possible motive for one of the deadliest mass shootings in recent U.S. history, details about Holmes’ background as a student and would-be scientist trickled out.
He had recently withdrawn from the competitive graduate program in neuroscience at the University of Colorado Denver, where he was one of six pre-thesis PhD students at its neuroscience program to be funded by a prestigious grant from the National Institutes of Health.
The program of 35 students is dedicated to training outstanding neuroscientists and academicians who will make significant contributions to neurobiology, the university said in a statement.
The shooting was the worst in the U.S. since the Nov. 5, 2009, attack at Fort Hood, Texas.