Details emerging from thousands of emails released on Wednesday reveal that James Holmes, the suspected shooter responsible for the July 2012 Colorado massacre, actually had a girlfriend around the time of the attacks.
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Holmes and a grad student who also attended the University of Colorado were said to have a brief romance, according to Larry Hunter, the director of the Center for Computational Bioscience.
“Yeah, he was a grad student here, and, it turns out, had a brief romantic relationship with one of the grad students in my program last fall,” Hunter wrote. “She, fortunately, it turns out is in India right now.”
“She knows,” Hunter added, “and is pretty freaked out.”
The emails, some of which are partially or fully blacked out due to university privacy laws, also reveal some chilling details about how the university came to realize one of their own students was involved with the massacre that killed 12 people and wounded 58.
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According to the Daily Mail, the director of the neuroscience program was alarmed that The Dark Knight shooter could have been one of her own students.
Holmes’ name began to circulate in news reports a few hours after the early-morning shooting.
At 6:47 a.m., Angie Ribera, director of the neuroscience program, noted that the shooter could be the 24-year-old of the same name who had just withdrawn from her department.
“Do you think we should meet with students in his class?” she asked colleagues. “If they had been close to him, this would definitely be something that I think we should do. But as they were not, I do not know.”
Ribera sent an email to another senior faculty member noting that Holmes was in custody. “However, he was friendly with 1-2 students in another program and I am worried about the safety of all (neuroscience) students and Faculty as well as the safety of all (medical) students.”
We’re wondering if Holmes’ romantic relationship could have helped him overcome some of his personal demons, but with a history of psychiatric problems, we can’t say for certain.
SOURCE: The Daily Mail
