Police: Shooter planned rampage for months

Associated Press

AURORA, Colo.

The Colorado shooting suspect planned the rampage that killed 12 midnight moviegoers with “calculation and deliberation,” police said Saturday, receiving deliveries for months that authorities believe armed him for battle and were used to rig his apartment with dozens of bombs.

Authorities said Saturday evening that all hazards have been removed from the apartment of suspect James Holmes and that residents in surrounding buildings can return home.

Aurora police, FBI agents and bomb-squad technicians spent much of Saturday entering the apartment booby-trapped with explosives and unknown liquids, a day after police said he opened fire and set off gas canisters in a suburban theater minutes into the premiere of the Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises.” The attack left 12 dead and 58 injured.

Police said that all the hazards have been taken to a disposal site.

All residents can now return to their homes except for those in Holmes’ apartment building, where FBI agents are collecting evidence.

Holmes’ apartment was rigged with jars of liquids, explosives and chemicals that were booby trapped to kill “whoever entered it,” Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said, noting it likely would have been one of his officers.

“You think we’re angry? We sure as hell are angry,” Oates said.

Authorities wouldn’t discuss a motive for one of the deadliest mass shootings in recent U.S. history, as makeshift memorials for the victims sprang up and relatives began to publicly mourn their loved ones. Holmes recently had withdrawn from a competitive graduate program in neuroscience; neighbors and former classmates in California have said he was a smart loner who said little.

He apparently had prepared the attack at the Aurora theater well in advance, receiving multiple deliveries by mail for four months to his home and school and buying thousands of rounds of ammunition on the Internet, Oates said.

Holmes, 24, was in solitary confinement for his protection at a county detention facility Saturday, held without bond on suspicion of multiple counts of first-SFlbdegree murder. He was set for an initial hearing Monday and had been appointed a public defender, authorities said.