James Holmes, the gunman who opened fire in a Colorado movie theater, killing 12 people and wounding dozens more, booby-trapped his apartment, Reuters reported on Friday.
Police said the 24-year-old Holmes, who was taken into custody after the shooting in a parking lot behind the cinema, booby-trapped his Aurora, Colorado apartment with sophisticated explosives, creating a hazard for law-enforcement and bomb squad officers who swarmed to the scene.
The living room of the suspect's apartment was crisscrossed with trip wires connected to what appeared to be plastic bottles containing an unknown liquid, Chris Henderson, Aurora's deputy fire chief, told Reuters.
Holmes, who spent at least part of his childhood in San Diego, received a bachelor's degree in neuroscience from the University of California, Riverside, but couldn't find a job after returning to San Diego several years ago. For a year or so, he worked part-time at a McDonald's, Reuters reported.
By June 2011, Holmes was in Colorado, where he enrolled in a doctoral program in neuroscience at the University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus. In a statement, the school said on Friday he had been in the process of withdrawing.
Before Friday, his only other brush with police was a traffic ticket, authorities said.
Holmes, who was wearing a gas mask and body armor, hurled a gas canister into the auditorium and opened fire on moviegoers who were attending a midnight premiere of the new "Batman" movie at a mall in Aurora.
Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates told Reuters the suspect was armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, a 12 gauge shotgun and a Glock .40 caliber handgun. Police found an additional .40 gauge handgun in his car parked just outside the rear entrance to the cinema, Oates said.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American Desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)