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Grin reaper: Colorado madman smirks in court

(AFP/Getty Images)

HORROR:Officer Justin Grizzle (above) teared up yesterday as he testified about the nightmare scenario created by mass-murder suspect James Holmes at an Aurora, Colo., theater.

HORROR:Officer Justin Grizzle (above) teared up yesterday as he testified about the nightmare scenario created by mass-murder suspect James Holmes at an Aurora, Colo., theater. (AP)

HORROR: Officer Justin Grizzle (left) teared up yesterday as he testified about the nightmare scenario created by mass-murder suspect James Holmes (right) at an Aurora, Colo., theater. Holmes remained chillingly calm, Grizzle said. (
)

This sicko loves the limelight.

Accused “Dark Knight’’ killer James Holmes couldn’t stop himself from smiling in court yesterday as prosecutors showed surveillance video of him entering a Colorado movie theater minutes before he shot dead 12 people and wounded 58 more.

“I could see it on his face as he watched video of himself. I never stopped watching him. When he saw himself, he smiled very quickly, and then he controlled himself,’’ said an angry Tom Teves, who lost his 24-year-old son, Alex, in the massacre at an Aurora, Colo, theater July 20.

“You could see it in his eyes — he lit up more than once,’’ Teves said of Holmes, as clips showed the fiend holding the door for two moviegoers before the doomed midnight premiere of the latest Batman flick, and another time, struggling to swipe his ticket at a kiosk.

“He was excited to see himself. He’s not crazy, he’s pretending to be,’’ said the dad, who was in the courtroom at the time.

But Holmes remained stoic as veteran cops were reduced to tears testifying about the horrific scene they found after the shootings.

Police Sgt. Gerald Jonsgaard wept recalling how another cop desperately ran over to him carrying the limp body of little Veronica Moser-Sullivan, 6, so that the senior officer could check for a pulse.

The stricken sergeant said he knew the child was already dead, but that didn’t stop him from still shouting, “ ‘I want her triaged!’

“The theater was dark except for the movie. It was still playing,’’ the cop recalled between tears.

The heartbreaking testimony was part of a weeklong preliminary hearing for Holmes, now 25. Prosecutors must prove to a judge that they have enough evidence to mount their 164-count case against the alleged fiend, who dyed his hair a flaming red before carrying out the carnage — and afterward claimed to be “the Joker.”

Some survivors and kin of dead victims were in the packed courtroom to hear the cops describe the screams, bloodshed and unimaginable grief they encountered that night.

Officer Justin Grizzle recounted how he was frantically driving one bloodied dad to the hospital when the father tried to jump out of his patrol car to go back to try to find his 7-year-old daughter at the theater.

“Our daughter’s back there!’’ the dad said, according to Grizzle.

“He opened the door and tried to jump out as I was driving,’’ Grizzle said. “I had to grab his shoulder to keep him in, he kept trying to jump out.’’

Grizzle started crying as he described the scene minutes earlier at the theater.

“People were yelling, ‘Help us! Help us!’ They were covered in blood,’’ he said.

Asked if he saw any of the dead, the cop sobbed, “Yes, there were several bodies in the theater laying motionless.’’

He said he began transporting victims to the hospital because “after what I saw in that theater, I didn’t want anyone else to die.”

He said some of his passengers were so bloodied and mangled that he couldn’t tell their race, or even if they were male or female.

“As I was driving and making turns, there was so much blood, I could hear it sloshing in the back of my car,’’ the cop said.

One of his passengers, Caleb Medely, 23, who was shot in the head, “was making a God-awful noise. He was trying to breath,’’ Grizzle recalled.

“I kept yelling, ‘Don’t f—ing die on me! Don’t f—ing die on me!’’ the officer said.

Medely survived.

Meanwhile, Grizzle and other officers recounted how — in stark contrast to the drama unfolding around them — Holmes was sickeningly calm and nonplussed after being busted.

“When I went over to Holmes, I asked if there was anyone helping him … he just looked at me and smiled. It was a smirk,’’ Grizzle said.

Jonsgaard said Holmes had used a small green square of plastic — something typically used to hold down tablecloths — to wedge open the door to the theater during the midnight screening of the latest Batman flick “The Dark Knight Rises” and sneak in.

Grizzle said he later discovered that Holmes had a green laser attached to one of his handguns — to target his victims like animals before shooting them.

Officer James Oviatt said he and other cops at first thought the heavily armored Holmes was one of them as the suspect stood by his white car outside the theater minutes after the shooting.

“He had a gas mask and helmet on,’’ Oviatt said. But “as I got closer to him, I realized he was not a police officer because he was just standing there not doing anything, not in any hurry, not excited about anything.”

“I told him to get on the ground, and he did immediately.

“When the suspect put his hands up, I saw there was a handgun on the top of the car where his hands had been,’’ and a magazine rifle fell out of his pocket.

One of the shooter’s badly wounded victims, Farrah Soudani, attended yesterday’s hearing — but from a distance.

She chose to watch it on closed-circuit TV from the jury room rather than be near her would-be killer in court, her dad said.

“If she wanted to sit in the courtroom, I would have held her hand. But she didn’t want to look at [Holmes’] face,’’ said the young woman’s dad, Sam.

“It’s like he has no emotion. He’s a robot,’’ he said of Holmes. “[The officers’] testimony was hard to listen to. I was crying along with everyone else.”