Interview: Gun range owner rejected membership to Colorado shooter
Jul 23, 2012, 12:08 PM | Updated: 2:15 pm
James E. Holmes appears in Arapahoe County District Court, Monday, July 23, 2012, in Centennial, Colo. Holmes is being held on suspicion of first-degree murder, and could also face additional counts of aggravated assault and weapons violations stemming from a mass shooting last Friday in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., that killed 12 and injured dozens of others. (AP Photo/Denver Post, RJ Sangosti, Pool)
 A gun club owner said he denied membership to James Holmes, who appeared in court on Monday, because of his strange voice mail messages. (AP Photo/Denver Post, RJ Sangosti, Pool) |
It didn’t take long Friday for the owner of a Colorado gun
range to realize a guy who’d applied for membership
recently was the shooter who opened fire on a movie
theater premier, killing 12 and injuring 58 others.
In an interview with the Ross and
Burbank Show, Glenn
Rotkovich says he’d decided to deny James Holmes
application because of his bizarre voice mail greeting and
behavior.
Rotkovich called Holmes to follow up on his June 25
application and schedule him for a standard orientation,
something he does for all prospective new members.
He describes the voice mail greeting as “guttural,
dragging, rambling, incoherent,” and the owner of Lead
Valley Range in Aurora says he could only pick out a few
words at best, including Holmes’ first name.
Rotkovich says he left several messages but never got a
call back. And each time he heard the message, he grew
increasingly baffled and troubled.
“It’s one of those bizarre things young people would do
sometimes and you wonder why would you put that on your
phone.”
Rotkovich says he usually gets a return call within
several hours because of a shortage of ranges
in the area. He decided he didn’t want to deal with it
anymore.
“I told the staff ‘this guy isn’t scheduled to be here, if
he shows up, set him down, call me. He doesn’t get
processed, nothing, until I talk to him.'”
Rotkovich wonders if there were warning signs about the
accused gunman that could have been gleaned from the voice
mail.
“I have no idea what his friends were doing that were
calling him or these people who say they know him if they
called. They had to hear it too,” he says.
But he says he wonders most how Holmes got the money to
buy the thousands of rounds of ammunition he stockpiled
before the attack.
Rotkovich also says he avoids movie theaters because it
specifically
prohibits the carrying of concealed weapons. He
speculates someone who was armed could have potentially
slowed or stopped the massacre.
“I mean maybe he picked this theater because he knew it.
I don’t know that. He did an awful lot of planning. He
was wearing body armor and the stuff for a reason. He
didn’t plan to die. I’ve got to believe he thought he was
getting away with it.”
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