Karen Swensen / Eyewitness News
Email: kswensen@wwltv.com | Twitter: @karenswensen
AURORA, Co. -- James Holmes sat in court and never said a word, but his appearance – that hair and those eyes – spoke volumes.
This is the man police say called himself The Joker and unleashed chaos during The Dark Knight Rises premiere.
Prosecutors say they'll talk to the victims to determine whether they'll seek the death penalty.
Among the victims is Bonnie Kate Pourcheau, the young Baton Rouge woman on a cross country road trip who unwittingly made a pit stop in hell.
“Part of me is really angry,” she said. “I don't know him but that someone would so such a thing and take so many lives.”
At first Pourcheau thought the attack was a special effect, but reality hit with the speed of the bullet that pierced her leg.
“I didn't necessarily feel the pain, but my whole body was just sort of in shock and shaking,” Pourcheau said.
In the madness Pourcheau was separated from her friend, lost and then found by Eric Wilkins.
“She was not screaming. She was not hysterical or anything like that. She was really calm,” Wilkins said.
And so was Wilkins. He crouched beside her, applied pressure to her wound, held her hand and talked to her, and in the midst of madness and death, a friendship was born.
“From talking to her I found out that they literally didn't know anybody here,” he said.
And so Wilkins never left her side until the threat was gone, and he gently put her in a police car headed to the hospital.
Thanks to the kindness of a stranger, Pourcheau is now on the mend, and it's her alleged would-be killer who faces the prospect of death.
Again, prosecutors have said they'll place Holmes' potential fate in his victim's hands. Police say he showed no mercy. Will they?
“At the same time I feel so much for him and feel compassionate for him, and I just hope and pray that he'll come to know forgiveness and the mercy that God has and that his heart will be changed,” Pourcheau said.
We want to thank our sister station WAFB and reporter Andre Moreau, who traveled to Denver and personally interviewed Pourcheau and Wilkins.
