Quiet, ‘really smart’ PhD student in custody

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/07/2012 (4852 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEFORE he allegedly walked into the Batman movie early Friday in Aurora, Colo., dressed in black body armour and carrying a handgun, a shotgun and an assault rifle, James Holmes was a graduate student in neuroscience — a PhD candidate who sat in classes with titles such as “biological basis of psychiatric and neurological disorders.”

He was known as a very quiet young man, introverted but pleasant. Holmes, 24, had shown scholarly promise in the recent past. He’d earned a merit scholarship out of high school in a sunny San Diego suburb. He had graduated from college with honours. From there, he’d gone to graduate school at the University of Colorado at Denver.

And then something changed. By this spring, Holmes had begun to struggle with poor test scores. He eventually decided to quit school.

The next step, the alleged descent into horrific violence, remains mysterious.

As of Friday evening, no one had emerged to speak on his behalf. He will appear in court Monday and is expected to be formally charged next week. What’s certain is the alleged killer planned his crime carefully, gearing up as if he were a commando before invading the Century 16 movie theatre in Aurora during The Dark Knight Rises.

The shooter wore a ballistic helmet, ballistic vest, ballistic leggings, a throat protector, a groin protector, gloves, a gas mask — all black. Police say Holmes killed a dozen people and left 58 others injured before surrendering when police confronted him at his car behind the theatre.

Police would not discuss any motive for the massacre. They said Holmes revealed to them during questioning that there were explosives in his apartment in Aurora. They went to the complex and, peering through a back window, discovered it was booby-trapped with multiple chemical and incendiary devices linked by wires.

Holmes went to Westview High School in an upscale San Diego neighbourhood where his parents, Robert and Arlene Holmes, moved in 2005. Westview classmate Breanna Hath, who now works as a nurse, said she remembers Holmes as extremely quiet and “really sweet, shy. He didn’t have any creepy vibe about him at all.”

Hath said Holmes lacked self-confidence. “There were no real girls he was involved with…” Another classmate, John Kabaci, said, “There was nothing negative or weird about him. He just stuck to himself.”

Keith Goodwin said he had a couple of conversations with Holmes during a European history class at Westview. He called Holmes a “generally pleasant guy.”

“James was certainly not someone I would have ever imagined shooting somebody,” he said.

Fellow student Tori Burton said Holmes was part of Westview’s cross-country team.

“He was a nice guy when you did occasionally talk to him. But he was definitely more introverted,” she said.

Dan Kim, a 23-year-old student at the University of California San Diego, called the suspect a “super-nice kid,” “kinda quiet” and “really smart.”

Holmes earned a bachelor’s degree with honours in neuroscience in 2010 from the University of California, Riverside, said Timothy P. White, the school’s chancellor. Holmes, who attended the school on a merit scholarship, had no run-ins with campus police, White said.

“He obviously, academically, had the capability to do just about anything he wanted,” White said of Holmes at a news conference, adding he was at “the top of the top” academically.

But this spring Holmes was withdrawing from the University of Colorado Denver’s graduate program in neurosciences after enrolling just over a year ago, the university said.

Ben Leung, 27, lives two floors below the suspect. Though the two never spoke, Leung said he had a friend who once tried to say hello to the suspect and didn’t receive a response.

“He didn’t seem like a guy who stood out,” Leung said.

Holmes is the grandson of a decorated military veteran who was a respected educator at the prestigious York School in Monterey, Calif. Lt. Col. Robert M. Holmes served in the Okinawa campaign during the Second World War.

 

— Washington Post, with files from the Associated Press