Civil trial over Colorado theater shooting security begins

DENVER (AP) — Nine months after the Colorado theater shooter was sentenced to life in prison, some victims are returning to the same courtroom in hopes of holding the company that owns the suburban Denver movie theater accountable for not doing more to prevent his bloody rampage.

In a civil trial starting Monday in state court, 28 victims' families say Century Theaters should have had armed guards at the packed opening of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" and alarms that would have sounded when James Holmes slipped into the darkened auditorium through an emergency exit and opened fire, killing 12.

The lawsuit says theater employees failed to check doors, lacked closed-circuit television cameras that would have allowed them to spot trouble and did not intervene as victims lay wounded and dying in the aisles.

Without Holmes' testimony, attorneys will rely on the spiral notebook in which he detailed elaborate plans for the killings, including lists of weapons to buy and diagrams showing which auditoriums in the theater complex would allow for the most casualties.

Holmes soon re-entered, stood before the crowd of more than 400, threw gas canisters and opened fire with a shotgun, assault rifle and semi-automatic pistol.