After a shooting left 12 dead and 38 wounded at a Batman movie premiere last night in Aurora, Colo., users of social news site Reddit urgently collected first-hand accounts and collated a timeline of the events.
The shooter entered through an emergency door, tossed a smoke bomb, and opened fire. Redditor Peeper13 posted her account of the harrowing events.
“Someone came into our theater at the midnight release of Dark Knight Rises and began opening fire,” Peeper13 wrote in the thread at r/AskReddit.
She continued:
Boyfriend and I have evacuated safe and sound. The shooting began during a gunfight scene in the movie, and at first, we thought it was special effects when smoke rose up. When shots happened again and people began to run, we thought something was up. A guy ran in and shouted there was a gunman in the building, and the alarms to emergency evacuate started to go off.
I now know what tear gas feels like. I’ve never had to ‘get down’ with a police officer screaming at us. This is the most fucked up night of my short life.
Facts started trickling in as redditors from around the world swarmed to the thread. One, an Aurora resident who lived just blocks from the movie theater, provided some distant photographs of the crime scene, with police SWAT vehicles and ambulances clearly visible in the distance.
“i am one of the 50 wounded in the aurora theatre shooting,” wrote another. “Here are a few photos of my very lucky but nonethless terrifying brush with death. my thoughts go out to those less fortunate than me.” (View the photos here.)
Meanwhile, in the r/askreddit thread, redditor integ3r assembled a massive timeline of the events that read like the Reddit version of a news ticker. What we’ve posted below is just a small sample of integ3r’s work.
ABSTRACT
Shooting at the AMC Century Cinema: [4] map, [5] local police scanner. Bomb was may have been confirmed. It certainly sounded like it. Apparently a bomb may have blown up a part of a theater at the Dark Knight Rises premiere. Although the news isn’t corroborating this right now, it definitely sounded like it on the scanner. Actually, it was probably the tear gas canisters.
Theater 9 (epicenter), Theater 8 (some hit), Theater 16 (people heard tear gas canisters)
ALL TIMES IN MDT, AM
1:27: “Bring as much crime scene tape as you can”
1:28: Aurora PD merging communications with Denver PD
1:35: Shooter wearing green camp pants
1:37: bomb squad is there, bringing in K-9 units. possible other bombs
1:40: 18 ambulances on scene
1:41: 9news story [6] posted.
1:42: “All ten people in the theater are black.” In this context, it means fatalities.
1:43: Report of a bomb going off in a theater.
1:45: Patients being transported to Denver Health
1:47: Command staff briefing. This is huge.
1:49: Car, Tennesee plates, Hyundai, license [redacted]. third to west, in front of doors. Possible bomb. Main entrances of mall covered. Bomb squad moving in.
Reddit is making a habit of collating the news as it aggregates it. Last week, a redditor was the first to break news of a Toronto shooting that left two dead and 24 wounded.
Police arrested a man they believe to be the shooter at a parking lot near the theater.
“He did not resist. He did not put up a fight,” a police spokesperson told CNN.
Photo via Reddit/themurderator