Batman shooting survivor proposes
Jamie escaped with his baby Ethan, then popped the question to the boy's mother who also survived the shooting.
Surviving the deadly movie theatre shooting in a Denver suburb was one momentous event that Jamie Rohrs and Patricia Legarreta shared. The other came afterward when they got engaged to be married at the hospital.
The couple were in a theatre in Aurora, watching a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises with Legarreta's four-year-old daughter and their infant son, when the gunman opened fire and chaos ensued.
Later, reunited and with the whole family safe, Rohrs proposed to Legarreta, who suffered a minor bullet wound. "He just looked at me and he said, 'I know this is not the time and place, but will you marry me?' And I said, 'Yes'," Legarreta told CNN host Piers Morgan, discussing her fiance's impromptu proposal.
"Going through 10 minutes of thinking he was dead and I would never see him again, you never want that feeling again," she added.
Police have identified the suspected gunman as 24-year-old James Eagan Holmes. He's accused of opening fire in the crowded theatre at a mall in Aurora, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. Police said 30 people remained hospitalised on Friday evening, 11 of them in critical condition.
"There was a moment where the shooting stopped and I saw people running, and at that moment I just grabbed the baby and I just grabbed my daughter and got her out as fast as I could. I was just thinking we've just got to get out. I just got to get out the doors and if I just fall dead, just get my kid out of here," Legarreta said
Rohrs said he lost their four-month-old son Ethan in the darkness and chaos of the theatre, but got out himself. Then once outside, he couldn't initially find Legarreta. "I got to my truck and I drove across the mall," he said.
"I'm going to call 911 and trying to call Patricia, and it's just ringing and every time it rings I'm like, they're dead, they're dead, your whole family is dead. I couldn't think. I got a phone call from a Colorado number and I answered it, and thank God it was Patricia," Rohrs added.
Source: Reuters
Published: 21st July 2012
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