SYMPATHETIC STAR: “Dark Knight” Christian Bale visits wounded fan Carey Rottman (above) yesterday and is joined by wife Sibi Blazic at the memorial in Aurora. (CB/bauergriffinonline.com)
He handpicked some of his victims.
Crazed “Joker’’ James Holmes ran though a darkened Colorado movie theater grabbing certain people and gunning them down, a stricken survivor said yesterday.
“I see him up there, and I’m hearing him yell at people, and then you just hear the rounds going off: Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!” said the witness, Stephanie Davies, 21.
“He would shout, ‘What are you doing? I said stand up!’ And he would pick people up. I saw him stand over someone. I just see hair and him holding the shirt and — boom!”
SHOOTING VICTIMS GET VISIT FROM A GALLANT KNIGHT
Davies wasn’t hurt, but her best pal, Allie Young, 19, was shot in the neck and could have died had Davies not stanched the bleeding.
She provided her chilling account as new details emerged about the 24-year-old madman’s plot to shoot up the theater during a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises,” and his creepy life behind bars since Friday’s massacre left 12 dead in Aurora.
The geeky former neuroscience doctoral student, who been living off a $26,000-a-year federal and school grant, spent $15,000 buying weapons and gear online, sources told CBS.
One UPS driver delivered about 90 packages alone to Holmes at school in the past few months.
After he was caught, Holmes, who dyed his hair red and called himself the Joker, stayed in character as cops covered his hands with plastic bags to preserve as evidence any traces of gunpowder.
He proceeded to use the bags as hand puppets, sources told ABC.
Acting out in prison — by spitting at officers to the point where they make him wear a face guard — Holmes was first hauled off to isolation in the women’s ward.
But “they’ve been moving him around from place to place,’’ Dennis Norris, whose wife is an inmate, told The Post yesterday.
“He was in the women’s pod, but everyone in there wants to kill him. They moved him to the infirmary this morning.”
Meanwhile, a woman who cheated death while her husband was critically wounded gave birth to a healthy boy. Katie Medley, 21, welcomed little Hugo Jackson Medley at University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora.
But the baby’s father, aspiring stand-up comic Caleb Medley, 23, remained in critical condition in the same hospital’s ICU with a gunshot wound to the head that also took out an eye.
Another victim, Petra Anderson, 22, survived a shotgun blast to the head — and avoided brain damage because of a birth defect that allowed a pellet to pass clean through her skull.
Her sister, Chloe Anderson, told ABC, “[Her surgeon] didn’t know how it’s possible for the bullet to travel so straight.”
One moviegoer who wasn’t hurt — but watched his best friend die — said he plans to sue the theater and Warner Bros. for the “extreme trauma’’ he suffered, TMZ reported.
In another development, DC Entertainment, which publishes Batman comics, said the latest edition of a title featuring the character, Batman Incorporated No. 3, which had been due to hit stores today, will be postponed for one month out of respect for the victims and families in Aurora “because the comic contains content that may be perceived as insensitive in light of recent events.” Other comics featuring the character remained on schedule.
Additional reporting by Barry Bortnick and
in Aurora.