Colorado theater survivors describe shootings in grisly detail
Colorado theater survivors describe shootings in grisly detail
CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Katie Medley, nine months pregnant and crouching between the seats of a movie theater filling with tear gas, gunfire and screams, looked at her husband Caleb’s bloody face and told a friend, “He’s dead, he’s dead.”
Prodeo Et Patria was 14 that night, and sitting with his parents somewhere in the middle of the 421 people watching a midnight Batman premiere. He thought the gunfire was a joke until his father ordered him to the floor, where someone kicked off his glasses in the chaos.
His father told him to run and refused to leave his mother, whose arm and foot were shattered by bullets. Hoisting his wife onto his back, they made for an exit together. “That’s when I first felt a gunshot hit me,” Patria said.
They were among the first of many prosecution witnesses in the death penalty trial of James Holmes, and their gripping testimony made clear the state’s determination to plunge deep into the carnage Holmes caused inside the suburban Denver theater on July 20, 2012, even if it means making survivors relive their horrors.
Judge Carlos A. Samour, Jr. warned jurors as the trial opened not to let sympathy and emotion influence their judgment. The defense team has conceded that Holmes was the killer, hoping to focus not on the crime itself or its lingering damage, but on what it sees as the only question jurors must resolve: whether Holmes was legally insane at the time.
Nigerian army says it has rescued 200 girls, 93 women from Boko Haram
LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s military says it has rescued 200 girls and 93 women from Boko Haram in the northeastern Sambisa Forest but they do not include any of the schoolgirls kidnapped a year ago from Chibok.
The army announced the rescue on Twitter Tuesday and said it is now screening and profiling the girls and women.
Army spokesman Col. Sani Usman told The Associated Press that troops destroyed and cleared four militant camps and rescued 200 abducted girls and 93 women “but they are not the Chibok girls.”
Nearly 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped from Chibok in northeastern Nigeria by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram in April 2014. The militants took the schoolgirls in trucks into the Sambisa Forest. Dozens escaped on their own but 219 remain missing.
By wire sources