Winona Graduate Injured In Colo. Theater Shooting
MILWAUKEE (AP) — A Wisconsin native was recovering Friday after the deadly shooting rampage at a Denver area movie theater showing the new Batman movie.
Carey Rottman, 27, and his friend were wounded by the gunman who killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens of others at the midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises."
Rottman posted on his Facebook page from a hospital emergency room at 4 a.m. Friday that he was "Shot in the leg at Batman."
"Where is he when you need him. Please pray for everyone here," Rottman posted.
Rottman's friend was shot twice and was recovering at a different hospital, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Rottman called his parents at 2 a.m. from the hospital, said his father, Thiensville dentist Dale Rottman.
"It's the phone call you don't want to get," Dale Rottman told the Journal Sentinel from his son's hospital room.
Carey Rottman had surgery Friday morning to close a gunshot wound to his high. Damage was limited to muscle, and the bullet did not hit a tendon or artery, his father said.
Carey Rottman just married his college sweetheart, Jessica Thron, last month. The couple met at Winona State University in Minnesota, and Rottman moved to Denver after graduating from Winona State in 2008. His bride, who is from Stillwater, Minn., did not go to the midnight movie.
A 15-year-old Plymouth girl was in an adjacent theater when the gunman began shooting.
Plymouth High School sophomore Katie Trakel was with a group of 12 friends. Trakel told The Sheboygan Press she was not hurt, but a stray bullet went through the wall of the theater and hit one of her friends, who was sitting two rows behind her, in the arm.
"He ran out of the theater and we saw blood on the stairs. We started yelling that we gotta get out, so we ran out, but stopped at the door, because we thought he might be out there. We were startled and didn't know what was going on," Trakel told the newspaper.
The suspect allegedly threw a gas canister and then opened fire. Trakel said it was about 20 minutes into the movie when she heard gunshots and saw smoke. She and her friends thought it was part of the movie until they realized their friend had been shot.
Trakel said her friend is hospitalized but is expected to make a full recovery.
"Everyone was sprinting out the doors," she said. "Fire alarms were going outside the theater, there were lots of injured people with blood on their faces, but we got our whole group together and made it out."
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