Exclusive: Wife of Slain Moviegoer Details Flash Attack
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Ida Mae Astute/ABC(NEW YORK) — The wife of the Florida man shot to death in a movie theater after texting with his daughter’s babysitter says there were no threatening words exchanged and that “in 30 seconds” her life was “shattered.”
“It was a couple of words. No threats. No harm. No nothing,” Nicole Oulson said Thursday on ABC’s Good Morning America. “In the blink of an eye, 30 seconds, it just shattered my world.”
Oulson and her husband, Chad, were watching previews before the movie Lone Survivor at a Wesley Chapel, Fla., movie theater Jan. 13, on a rare date away from their young daughter, Alexis, when the shooting occurred.
“We’re both very respectful when the movie is on, that we put our phones away, so he took a couple of seconds just to check the phone to make sure there were no messages about our daughter,” Oulson said of her husband’s final moments.
Chad Oulson’s texting reportedly annoyed Curtis Reeves, 71, a retired police captain, sitting with his wife behind the Oulsons.
According to authorities, an argument erupted between the two men and, after Chad Oulson allegedly threw popcorn at Reeves, Reeves pulled out a .380 semi-automatic handgun and fatally shot him.
Nicole Oulson was wounded in the hand when she put it up to protect her husband.
“The gunshot wound to my finger is the least of my worries right now,” she said. “The real pain is in my heart and that will take a long time, if ever, to get over.”
Reeves was arrested at the theater and charged with second-degree murder. He is claiming self-defense, something Nicole Oulson’s attorney says they will fight in court.
“In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if it was popcorn, if it was Twizzlers, if it was a hot cup of coffee,” said the attorney, TJ Grimaldi. “There is absolutely no reason that this should have escalated to the level that it did, especially as quickly as it did.”
Grimaldi says Reeve’s self-defense claim will also not stand up under Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law, which Reeve’s lawyers have said they plan to invoke.
“The stand-your-ground is a defensive mechanism in the sense that it allows you to protect yourself with light force,” Grimaldi said. “It’s not an offensive thing and with what happened in this movie theater that day, that’s the only thing that occurred here.”
“He [Reeves] was the aggressor,” Grimaldi said. “He was the offender and he took it to another level so to be able to use that as a defense is almost impossible.”
Nicole Oulson says she wants to see the man who killed her “outgoing, friendly, just easy to get along with” husband behind bars for the rest of his life.
“He brought an unfair life sentence to me, to have to raise my daughter alone, to have live without the love of my life, for my daughter to grow up without her daddy by her side for graduation and marriage,” she said. “It was so unnecessary, for no reason, so I want him behind bars and to be punished for his senseless act.”
Reeves faces up to life in prison if convicted.
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