Father of Colorado theater shooter back on stand

She also testified that James Holmes’ sister Chris is always wondering how he’s doing, despite a relationship that was sometimes contentious when the siblings were growing up.

Defense attorney Rebekka Higgs asked if she wished his campus psychiatrist in Colorado had told them when she called that June that he had been talking about killing people. “I would have been crawling on all fours to get to him”. She said he never hurt anyone before the attack. “I told them I didn’t think there was any chance he was a terrorist”.

“He was not a violent person”.

Robert Holmes’ wife, Arlene, is scheduled to take the witness stand on Wednesday.

Holmes was convicted of killing 12 people and wounding 70 in the July 20, 2012 attack on the Century Aurora 16 movie theater complex. He and his wife thought their son was depressed or suffering Asperger’s syndrome, but the doctor would not return their calls seeking more information. “Schizophrenia chose him. He didn’t choose it”.

They spoke at length, Robert Holmes said.

Arlene Holmes has attended almost every day of her son’s trial along with her husband, Robert, but this is the first time she has testified or spoken publicly during the trial.

“People said to me that when your kid turns 18 you’re done”.

“His whole demeanor seemed different”, she said.

Holmes had enrolled in a prestigious neuroscience postgraduate program at the university in 2011.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) – James Holmes came home for winter break from graduate school looking haggard and making odd facial expressions that looked similar to the wide-eyed smirk he flashed in one of his first jail booking photos after he opened fire on a crowded Colorado movie theater seven months later, his father said. He shared his fear of failure later that spring, but his parents said they had no idea he was descending into mental illness.

Robert Holmes wrapped up his second day on the stand during the sentencing phase of his son’s trial. Robert Holmes said his son still had that infamous red hair at the time of their first visit.

“He said he was having trouble in school”, said his mother, Arlene Holmes. “But I could see there was something really wrong with him”. Their concerns eased again when they finally reached him by phone on July 4, 2012, just two weeks before the shooting.

Robert Holmes also walked the jury through his son’s early years, narrating family photos and home videos that depicted a typical childhood.

Earlier on Wednesday, Holmes’ father told the penalty phase of the proceedings how FBI agents quizzed him at an airport just hours after the rampage. His father rarely, if ever saw him with friends.

It was during that time that James Holmes was building an arsenal in his apartment to carry out what was termed his “mission” to kill. Might he have been posing, trying to appear insane? Robert Holmes deflected the prosecutor’s suggestion, saying he knew nothing about how the photograph was taken. In this image made from Colorado Judicial Department video, defense attorney Tamara Brady, left, questions Robert Holmes, top right, the father of James Holmes, background left, during the sentencing phase o…

Death sentences must be unanimous, and the judge has explained to jurors that their decision will be highly personal.

The father of Colorado theater shooter James Holmes isn’t showing much emotion as he testifies in an effort to spare his son from execution.

“We wouldn’t be sitting here if she told me that….”