Countdown to massacre
Midnight (7am UK) -A special midnight screening of the finale to the Batman series, The Dark Knight Rises, begins in theatre 9 at the Century 16 cinema in the Aurora Mall near Denver, Colorado.
00.30 - Gunman bursts into the cinema dressed in black and wearing a bulletproof vest and a gas mask. He is carrying a shotgun and a pistol, with a rifle strapped to his back.
He drops a canister on the floor and witnesses hear a hissing sound as gas – possibly teargas – and acrid smoke is released.
The gunman then raises a weapon – believed to be the shotgun – and begins repeatedly firing toward the back of the audience.
According to James Wilburn, sitting in the second row, the gunman walks through the emergency exit door to his right, at the front of the auditorium.
In the chaos, some say, he remains static at the front of the theatre, though others describe him walking up the main aisle, firing at random into the crowd without saying a word.
Once he has emptied his shotgun he drops it on the floor, grabs his rifle and resumes firing. Witnesses heard up to 30 shots but said the gunman struck during a shoot-out scene in the film, adding to the confusion.
Cinema-goers in neighbouring auditoriums in the multiplex hear the shots ring out and say bullets explode through the walls, hitting and injuring people in Theatre 8.
Police receive the first emergency call. Hospitals are alerted to a ‘mass casualty incident’.
00.40: The first police arriving at the cinema spot a man in body armour and a gas mask at the back of the cinema. He is arrested without a struggle. Police say he was going back to his car, a white Hyundai, parked behind the cinema in a car park which was not generally used by the public.
Police find a rifle, a pistol and a shotgun in cinema.
Officers begin taking the injured to hospital in their squad cars, without waiting for ambulances, and a makeshift hospital is set up inside the mall.
Following his arrest, the suspect says he has explosives in his apartment in Aurora.
02.00: Police block off dozens of apartments and evacuate residents.
09.00: Officers continue a daylight search of the suspect’s apartment and find it has been rigged with explosives.