Aurora Shooting Victims May Get to Revisit Theater - East Idaho News
National

Aurora Shooting Victims May Get to Revisit Theater

  Published at

148946161?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1348776478196Thomas Cooper/Getty Images(AURORA, Colo.) — For the first time, victims and witnesses of the Aurora, Colo., shooting massacre are being approached about the chance to visit the site of one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

The news comes in an email obtained by ABC News, sent Thursday morning from the Arapahoe County District Attorney’s office to victims.

“The theater remains concerned about the Victims’ and Witnesses’ well-being and is open to the possibility of potential visits to the theater,” the email read. It instructs victims on how to get more information about the potential visits, but there are no dates or times given. The email said representatives of Cinemark, owners of the Century 16 theater, asked the district attorney’s office to relay the information.

Last week, Cinemark President and CEO Tim Warner said the Century 16 will be renovated and reopened sometime around the end of the year.

“We pledge to reconfigure the space and make the theater better than ever,” Warner said in a letter to Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan.

Don Lader and his wife Jacqueline — both former Marines — were in the Century 16 theater watching The Dark Knight Rises the night alleged shooter James Holmes opened fire. They have lobbied Cinemark and city officials for a chance to go back inside.

“It is going to be trying, but I think it’s something we have to do as part of the healing process and being able to move on,” Don Lader told ABC News.

Holmes, a former graduate student at the University of Colorado, is currently in jail awaiting trial. Police say he opened fire in the crowded theater in the early morning hours of July 20, killing 12 people and wounding 58. His defense team has said Holmes is mentally ill.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

SUBMIT A CORRECTION