CENTENNIAL — When their names were called, they rose and stepped forward — three years of eager and fretful waiting now reduced to just a few more steps.
For the survivors of the Aurora movie theater shooting called to testify during the trial’s opening days, the past week was a portal away from their pasts and into their futures. They smiled when talking about the moments leading up to the movie that night in July 2012, and they sobbed when talking about what came after. They glared at James Holmes, the man charged with trying to kill them, and they walked unflinchingly away from him when their testimony was finished.
In their testimony, some said they never even saw the gunman who shot them that night. After last week, some may never look upon him again.
“After I left I realized that it was finally over,” survivor Marcus Weaver wrote on Facebook after his testimony Wednesday. “No more court dates, no more anticipation or anxiety. I have worked hard to be able to cope with the feelings and thoughts that held me captive for months.”
“This case is really about ordinary people placed in an extraordinary situation.”
In the first four days of the trial, the prosecution called 26 witnesses. Of them, 12 were inside the theater when the shooting started. Here are recaps of their testimony.
Katie Medley
Katie Medley was nine months pregnant when she agreed to attend a midnight premier of “The Dark Knight Rises” with her husband, Caleb Medley, and their friend Ashley Kurz. They picked an aisle seat in case Katie went into labor during the movie.
When the shooting started, Katie and Ashley ducked under seats. She turned to ask her husband what to do.
“I couldn’t understand why he was still sitting in his chair when someone is shooting,” she said. “I saw blood pouring from his face.”
When the shooting stopped Katie made a painful decision to leave her husband, who she thought was dying, in the theater.
They squeezed hands.
“I told him I loved him and I would take care of our baby if he didn’t make it.”
Caleb Medley
Before the shooting, Caleb Medley was a stand-up comedian in Denver.
But a gunshot to the face drastically changed his life.
He lost his right eye and suffered significant brain damage after a bullet struck him the face.
Medley survived, thanks to Aurora Police Department officers who drove victims to hospitals in their patrol cars.
Medley underwent three surgeries in two days at University Hospital. During the third surgery, his wife gave birth to their first child. They named him Hugo.
Medley testified from his wheelchair. He answered the judge’s swearing-in with a slurred “I do,” that sounded like a growling imitation of a sneeze.
He answered two questions by spelling out “Y-E-S” on a chart with his finger.
Munirih Gravelly
Munirih Gravelly attended the movie with Jesse Childress and Derick Spruel, two co-workers at Buckley Air Force Base, and Spruel’s wife, Chichi Spruel.
Gravelly felt stinging in her hand as the first shots blasted in the theater. She ignored it. As she hunkered behind seats, she felt her face getting wet.
“I thought maybe it was soda,” she said. “When the lights came on I saw it was blood. It was someone else’s.”
Once outside, the stinging in her left hand returned. She had four holes caused by shotgun pellets. Another pellet was embedded in her scalp.
Derick Spruel
At first, Derick Spruel tried to ignore a gas canister sailing across the theater.
But his military experience quickly led him to another conclusion. As he huddled with his wife, Chichi, and friends, he believed the shooter would start going row-by-row to execute people.
“I thought to myself that if someone came up the aisle, I would have to do something,” Spruel said. “I thought I was going to die there.”
When the lights came on Childress wasn’t moving. Spruel shook his friend and yelled his name. He tried to lift him.
“It’s one of the big things in my mind,” Spruel said. “I could not pick him up. I wanted him to come out with us.”
Chichi Spruel
As gunshots rang through the dark crowded theater, Chichi Spruel dialed 911.
“Please come get us out of here,” she pleaded with the operator.
Spruel hadn’t really wanted to go to Century 16, a theater where she once found poor service and sticky floors.
She went because “All of the people at my husband’s job are geeks and they had been talking about the Batman movie for a week.”
When police entered the theater, Spruel first asked her husband if he had been shot. He had not.
Then, “I see Jesse lying face down in a pool of blood. I just remember Derick trying to lift him, screaming ‘Childress! Childress!'”
Prodeo Patria
Prodeo Patria was 14 in July 2012 when his parents agreed to take him to the midnight movie.
He wasn’t sure what was happening when tear gas billowed through the theater, but his father, Anggiat Mora, told him it was real.
Prodeo lay flat on his stomach in the aisle. Someone kicked him in the head.
During a pause in the shooting, “My father told me it was time to run,” Prodeo said.
He sprinted down the theater’s stairs and first turned right. The shooter was standing in his way and Prodeo’s mother, Rita Paulina, pushed him to the left.
As he ran, Prodeo felt something hit his lower left back.
“I looked back to see my mother on my father’s back and a lot of blood,” he said.
Outside, his father placed his mother on the sidewalk.
“I told my Dad I thought I got shot, too, and I showed him my back,” Prodeo said.
Anggiat Mora
Anggiat Mora, a native of Indonesia, slept in the theater seats before the movie started.
Mora made the decision for his family to run at their first chance. His son, Prodeo Patria, would be first. Then his wife, Rita Paulina.
“I was thinking why was my son going to that guy standing up. That’s the wrong way,” Mora said. “I thought, ‘Well, if we die together, I’m following them.'”
As they neared the exit, Mora’s wife hit the floor. She had been shot.
“I’m thinking if I could pull her out the door, it’s safe,” he said.
The family rode together in a police car to one hospital. There, they were forced in different directions.
Mora chose to leave his son and go with his wife because she did not speak English.
“I’m begging for everyone in there to keep them close together,” Mora said.
Rita Paulina
Rita Paulina spoke to the jury through an Indonesian interpreter as she recounted a similar story told by her son and husband.
Amid the gunshots, screaming and coughing, Paulina heard Mora say, “If I tell you to run, run.”
So she followed her son, Prodeo, when he bolted from the seats. She saw a person standing and holding “something long,” as they descended the stairs. She guided her son in the opposite direction from that person.
“When I was running I asked my husband what happened to my arm,” Paulina said. “It felt like a zombie.”
Mora told her to keep running. She fell when a bullet had struck her leg.
“I told my husband, “You just leave me here. You go with our son. I’m ready to die here,'” she said.
But Mora reminded her of their promise to go back to Indonesia the next year, and he lifted her onto his back. Lying on the sidewalk, Paulina still thought she might die.
“I prayed to God if I died there, he would take me to heaven,” she said.
Kaylan Bailey
The idea to go to a midnight movie premiere was hatched by Kaylan Bailey’s cousin.
Her cousin, Jamison Toews, and his girlfriend, Ashley Moser, had learned they were having a baby. Bailey and her friend Hailee Hensley had babysat Moser’s 6-year-old daughter, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, while the couple went to a doctor’s appointment.
When the shooting started, Kaylan, who was 13 at the time, held onto Veronica, who was underneath her mother. She could tell the girl had been shot and she asked her friend Hailee for her cell phone.
“I took my hand away for just a moment,” Bailey said. “When I put my hand back on her stomach it wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing anymore.”
Josh Nowlan
It was a given that Josh Nowlan, a big comic book fan, would attend the midnight premiere of the newest Batman movie. He went with his friends Brandon and Denise Axelrod, who had returned from their honeymoon that day.
As the shooter opened fire, the men shielded Denise Axelrod with their bodies. Several minutes into the shooting, Nowlan felt his leg burning. Then he felt it in his arm.
“I tried to ignore the pain and I tried to stay in the same position as I was,” Nowlan said. “The pain got too unbearable. I looked down at my leg and I saw big gaping hole in my calf.
“It felt like someone took a rusted railroad nail and was grinding it into my leg.
“I almost believed that my arm was completely blown off.”
Christina Blache
A manager at a Red Robin restaurant, Christina Blache had joined a large group of co-workers and their friends at the movie theater to celebrate Alex Sullivan’s 27th birthday.
Sullivan was “super pumped” about the movie because he loved superheroes. When a preview for a Superman movie played, Sullivan stood up and shouted “Yeah!” with his arms in the air, leading others in the theater to clap and cheer.
Sullivan would not make it out.
An Iraq veteran, Blache said she recognized the sound of a tear gas canister and gunfire from an automatic rifle.
“I heard people … ‘I’m getting shot. I’ve been hit,'” she said. “Stuff I’ve heard before. But I hadn’t been hit before.”
Bullets tore through both of Blache’s legs. She used her own shredded jeans as a tourniquet.
Police officers carried her out of the theater.
“I was groaning because they had to pick me up by the legs,” she said.
Marcus Weaver
“You just hear this thunderous noise,” Marcus Weaver remembered about the first gunshots. “It would hurt your ears and shake your body.”
Weaver and his friend Rebecca Wingo had only known each other for about a month, but they had bonded over a shared desire to help people. Wingo hoped to become a social worker. Weaver worked with the homeless and people recently released from prison.
That night as they settled into their seats, Weaver noticed the diversity in the audience — kids, teens, adults, people in costume, “all sizes and shapes,” he said.
“People were just really, really, really excited for the movie,” he said.
Then came the gunshots. Weaver pulled Wingo to the ground to protect her, but she wasn’t moving. He remembered the dirt and popcorn on the floor. He peeked through a 2-inch wide crack between the seats.
When there was a break in the shooting, he tried to pick her up, but people crashed into him. He fell down a row.
“I was just in a panic,” he said. “I wanted to get out of that theater. I knew that if I could get out of the theater, I could help Rebecca.”
He eventually made it outside. Hours later, he learned that Wingo had died. It was only after a little girl pointed it out to him that he realized he had been shot, as well, he said.
