Jade Tittman, 18, was up in the wee hours this morning with a friend during a visit to Darien when she started reading Twitter messages about the shooting at an Aurora, CO movie theatre, not far from her home in Littleton.
[According to an article on the New York Times website, the death toll in the shooting is 12, with dozens injured.]
Then, at about 3:30 a.m., she got a call from her boyfriend, also 18. He told her was there in the back of the theater when the gunman, dressed all in black, walked through an Exit door at the front and started firing.
Her boyfriend told her he was able to get out, but a friend of his had been shot and was being treated in a hospital.
At first, her boyfriend told her, he thought the gunman was doing something promotional as part of the premier midnight showing of the Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises," that the crowd was there to see.
"He said that he [the gunman] first shot up in the air, and then he shot all around—he didn't have a particular target," Tittman said. "He [her boyfriend] was really scared. He was really shocked that it was actually happening, and he didn't know if he was going to get out without being shot at."
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Tittman said she herself had never been to that movie theater, only to the shopping mall it's attached to, about 15 miles from her home.
"It's really scary to me, because I was looking to move to near there," she said. "This, obviously, is changing my mind. It's getting a little crazy."
Tittman has been staying with her grandmother during her visit, and her mother previously lived in New Canaan. She expects to be returning to Denver early next week.
"It's really sad that you have to worry about going to movies—be worried about what's going to happen," she said.
