DRAMA AT THE BOOBY-TRAPPED HOME
JAMES Holmes rigged his apartment with trip wires and traps before embarking on his gun massacre.
Aurora police chief Dan Oates said it could take his officers days to work their way through the apartment safely.
A series of incendiary and chemical devices and trip wires lie in their way and five buildings around the apartment were evacuated yesterday.
Mr Oates said his officers had never seen a situation like it and had been using a remote camera to assess the situation.
A woman who lives across the street from the suspect’s apartment said police evacuated her building around 4am.
‘They told us there was a bomb or bomb material located in the house across the street from us,’ said Rebecca Bradshaw.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents were involved in the apartment search, agency spokesman Tom Mangan said. The agency is also conducting emergency traces on Holmes’s four weapons to see how they were obtained from three separate shops in the Denver area.
Investigators have also found a drum magazine, capable of carrying 100 rounds of ammunition, which was attached to the AR-15 rifle Holmes used. Drinks bottles littered Holmes’s apartment, the top floor unit of a three-story red brick building in a run-down neighbourhood of Aurora four miles from the scene of the massacre.
The living room was crisscrossed with trip wires connected to the plastic bottles which contained an unknown fluid.