Anggiat Mora came to America from Indonesia expecting to find a “land of honey and milk,” he said Saturday as his wife underwent surgery for gunshot wounds suffered in the Aurora massacre that rocked the country.
Even though his wife, Rita Paulina, and their 14-year-old son were injured in the Century Aurora 16 theater shooting, which left a dozen people dead, he remains convinced that moving here was the right thing to do.
“At least we are working, we have some money, at least enough for our family,” he said, “and I can take my son to a good school.”
But Mora, who was not hurt, is badly shaken. At Denver Health on Friday, when someone dropped something in the room where Paulina, 45, lay with her arm and leg covered in medical dressing, he jumped.
Before that, as Paulina was still being treated in the emergency room, a loud noise caused her to jump. “We are so scared right now,” he said.
Paulina, who serves meals at a nursing home, was shot inches above and below her elbow and in her lower leg. Their son, Prodeo Patria, a student at Overland High being treated at University Hospital, was shot in the lower back as he ran for the theater exit.
Both are expected to recover.
In his hospital room Friday, Prodeo said that after escaping theater 9, he returned to assist his mother and father, and he helped another wounded man escape.
His father, who hoisted Paulina onto his back and carried her out as the shooting continued, didn’t know his son was wounded until they were about 30 feet from the exit and had stopped running.
“He said, ‘Look at my back, Dad,’ and I looked and see a hole,” Mora said.
By then, police were arriving. An officer told Prodeo to sit on the floor near his mother before they were taken from the theater.
Doctors plan to leave the bullet that’s lodged in Prodeo’s back alone, at least for a while.
A fan of comic-book superheroes, Prodeo was excited to go to the midnight screening of the new Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises.”
“I will watch it again,” he said, “but I will wait until it goes on video.”
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671, tmcghee@denverpost.com or
