Aurora shootings: despair and disbelief at end of unimaginable day

Brooke Singer was one of the lucky ones. The 22-year-old actress had planned to go to the Century 16 cinema after a rehearsal for the musical she is appearing in. But the rehearsal was cancelled, so she stayed home instead.

Six of her friends were watching a screening next door to the one the gunman targeted. They saw bullets rip through the walls, and got caught up in the bloodied, panicky mass of people fleeing the scene. "I was supposed to be there," Singer said. "It is, like, one decision you make and that decides everything."

Marcus Weaver was one of the unluckier ones. He went to see The Dark Knight Rises with his friend Rebecca, sitting a few rows from the front, and was shot in the arm.

Holding his bloodied T-shirt afterwards, Weaver described a cinema packed with people eager to see the film. "It was exciting," he said. The crowd was boisterous and then, about 15 to 20 minutes in, Weaver saw something "shoom" across the darkened theatre. It exploded and the shooting began. "There was a man in the corner. You could pick out his silhouette. It was like the fourth of July," he said.

Weaver, 41, a store manager, said he dived on his friend and found she was covered in blood. He managed to carry her a little way but then decided to run for help. Each time the gunman paused in his shooting, Weaver said, the sound of screams filled the air. "He was reloading but I could hear the screaming of children … I could not get that sound out of my head."

He lifted his sleeves, his right arm in a sling, to show two round holes where shotgun pellets had hit him. He had not heard yet whether Rebecca had made it out alive or was one of the dead.

Andrew Bowers had been excited to see the film and was sat three rows from the front. He survived the scramble to get out with just a few scrapes and cuts. "I would not call this an injury, considering what happened to others," he said. "I am blessed. I just can't believe it."

Disbelief was a common emotion in Aurora as the town, a few miles from the scene of the 1999 Columbine school massacre, digested the idea that it too would become synonymous with a mass shooting. Despite being part of Denver's suburban sprawl, Aurora has a small-town feel. Almost everyone seemed to know someone who was there at the cinema.

Nate Rice, 21, who works at Starbucks, said a co-worker had got a call about her sister who was at the screening. He came to the police cordon around the cinema to lay some flowers below a sign that said: "Gone but not forgotten."

At a press conference late on Friday night, the Colorado governor, John Hickenlooper, struggled to overcome his emotions. He spoke of "an act that defies description", and his sentences often tailed off unfinished. "This senseless act of violence …" he said, before stopping and adding: "Again there are just no words." He tried again: "We are not going to let this community be defined by a …" But the words did not come that time either.

The Aurora police chief, Daniel Oates, fought to hold back tears as he spoke at the end of an unimaginable day. He listed how the suspected killer, James Holmes, had bought four guns and 6,000 rounds of ammunition and had decked himself out head to toe in bulletproof protection.

Oates methodically described what appeared to be an elaborate booby-trap that Holmes had left in his apartment. "I have personally never seen anything like what the pictures show us in there," he said. He spoke of how police had responded to the first distress calls within two minutes, had found a scene of death and carnage and then apprehended a suspect. "Our cops went through a lot," he said, his face creased with emotion.

Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel died at the hands of the Columbine killers, came down to a prayer vigil on a small rise above the cinema. He urged a group of about 300 locals to seek help or reach out to victims. "Just simply being in that theatre is trauma. Reach out to these people and tell them that you are praying for them," he said.

People held candles aloft. Many wept and held hands. At one stage a pastor urged everyone to hug each other, and the entire crowd broke out in a mass of embraces.

The impact of the seemingly random choice of whether or not to go and see a movie was on display here too. The Rev Acen Phillips told the crowd that his granddaughter had been inside the cinema. She had been with seven friends, one of whom had been shot in the leg. "The violence has got to stop," he said.

The Rev Timothy Tyler said he had been counselling a woman who had gone to see the film. Her boyfriend had pushed her to safety as the shooting began and then disappeared in the melee. She had not heard anything since and feared he was dead or injured.

Tyler said he had asked the woman to pray with him, but she had angrily refused. "I remembered that there are times when you do not feel like talking to God," Tyler said.

Mary Millens, 43, who works at the local airport, had come to the vigil looking for comfort, but it was a struggle. "It helped a little," she said. "But no one understands it. No one has the answers."