Six-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, a female, had just learned to swim and was looking forward to starting the first grade. On the evening of July 20, 2012, she was at a midnight screening of 'The Dark Knight Rises' at the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, with her mother, Ashley Moser. It was a night that would end in a devastating tragedy, cutting short the life of a young girl described by her grandmother as a special and intelligent child who knew how to make people happy.
During the movie, a man named James Eagan Holmes, dressed in tactical gear, entered the theater and set off tear gas grenades before opening fire on the audience with multiple firearms. In the chaos that ensued, Veronica was fatally wounded, becoming the youngest of the 12 people killed in the mass shooting. Her mother, Ashley Moser, was critically injured with gunshot wounds that resulted in paralysis and also caused her to have a miscarriage.
The suspect, 24-year-old James Eagan Holmes, was apprehended by police without resistance in the theater's parking lot immediately after the attack. He was found with several weapons, all of which had been purchased legally. Authorities also discovered that he had booby-trapped his apartment with explosives, which were later defused by a bomb squad.
Holmes was charged with 24 counts of first-degree murder, two for each victim, and 140 counts of attempted first-degree murder, among other charges. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. His trial began in April 2015, and in July of that year, a jury found him guilty on all counts. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but the jury could not reach a unanimous decision. Consequently, in August 2015, James Holmes was sentenced to 12 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 3,318 years for the attempted murders and explosives charges.
