CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) – Nine months after the Colorado theater shooter was sentenced to life in prison, some victims returned to the same courtroom Monday in hopes of holding the company that owns the suburban Denver movie theater accountable for not doing more to prevent his bloody rampage.
In a civil lawsuit in state court, 28 victims and their families say Century Theaters should have had armed guards at the packed opening of the Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises” and alarms that would have sounded when James Holmes slipped into the darkened auditorium through an emergency exit and opened fire, killing 12.
Jurors were being selected to determine if, in an age of mass shootings, the theater should have foreseen the possibility of an attack. Opening arguments were expected in the afternoon.
The families, some of whom filled the first rows of the courtroom, will argue Cinemark knew the midnight blockbuster would attract at least 1,000 people and should have had guards patrolling the parking lot, where they might have seen Holmes suiting up in head-to-toe body armor in his car. The lawsuit says theater employees failed to check doors, lacked closed-circuit television cameras that would have allowed them to spot trouble and did not intervene as victims lay wounded and dying in the aisles.
Theaters across the country had extra security for the July 20, 2012, premiere, and the Century 16 theater in Aurora typically had guards Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, said New York attorney Marc Bern, who is representing 27 of the families. The premiere fell on a Thursday.