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Victims’ families await news in agony

By Laura J. Nelson, Jenny Deam and Rick Rojas, Los Angeles Times –

AURORA, Colo. — Jessica Ghawi narrowly escaped a murderous rampage at a shopping center in Toronto last month, deciding to leave a food court where, moments later, a gunman killed two people and wounded six others.

The incident, and her narrow escape, deeply moved her.

“I was shown how fragile life was on Saturday,” Ghawi wrote on her blog. “I saw the terror on bystanders’ faces. I saw the victims of a senseless crime. I saw lives change. I was reminded that we don’t know when or where our time on Earth will end. When or where we will breathe our last breath.”

In a wicked twist of fate, the aspiring sports journalist was killed Friday in an early morning massacre in a Colorado theater, along with at least 11 others, by a gunman wielding an assault-style rifle, a shotgun, a handgun and canisters of a noxious chemical. Police said 59 others were wounded.

Officials had not released names of the dead or wounded, but some relatives and friends stepped forward to identify a handful of victims, or used social media to convey their grief.

Ghawi — who went by the name Jessica Redfield professionally — had red hair and a gleam in her eye. She was in her early 20s, with a big heart and big plans, her friends said.

About a year ago, she moved to Denver from San Antonio to pursue her career, her brother, Jordan, told Denver TV station KUSA. She worked as an intern at 104.3 The Fan, a Denver sports radio station, which posted a tribute to her on its home page. She was also involved with the You Can Play Project, a gay-rights group that supports equality in the locker room.

Hours before the midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises,” Ghawi joked on Twitter that she’d had to “coerce” a guy into going with her. She was with her ex-boyfriend and good friend Brent Lowak, who was visiting from San Antonio, said Lowak’s father, Larry. Brent Lowak was shot and underwent successful surgery, his father told a San Antonio TV station.

Jordan Ghawi, writing on his blog, gave an account of his sister’s last moments after he spoke with Brent Lowak.

When shots rang out, Lowak and Jessica Ghawi immediately dropped to the floor, Jordan Ghawi wrote.

Lowak called 911, heard Ghawi scream and realized that she had been shot in the leg. He applied pressure to her wound but was soon shot himself.

“While still administering first aid, Brent noticed that Jessica was no longer screaming,” Ghawi wrote. “He looked over to Jessica and saw what appeared to be an entry wound to her head.”

Lowak made it outside and immediately called Ghawi’s mother.

A short while later, Jordan Ghawi wrote, “I received an hysterical, and almost unintelligible, phone call from my mother stating that my sister, Jessica Ghawi, had been shot.”

The wounded ranged from three months to 45 years old, according to hospitals. Most appeared to be teenagers and young adults.

A Navy sailor is believed to be among the dead.

Dabbing at wounds that ran in a dotted line from her upper thigh to her ankle, Patricia Legarreta, 24, recounted the terror she felt for her small children when the attack began.

She and her boyfriend, Jamie Rohrs, had taken their 4-month-old son and 4-year old daughter to the movie, thinking the kids would sleep through it. Badly wounded in the leg, she put a child on each hip and ran for the exit.

“I need to get out,” she recalled thinking. “My kids are not going to die in here.” Neither child was hurt.

As some families learned the fate of loved ones, others were caught in a terrible limbo, knowing a family member had been wounded but unable to find any information. In a midday press conference, police announced that 10 bodies remained inside the theater but did not release the names of the dead.

Greg Medek’s youngest child, 23-year-old Micayla, was shot, but her friends were told by authorities to leave her in the theater, her relatives said. Her fate was not immediately known.

Cayla, as she liked to be called, worked at Subway and described herself on Facebook as “a simple, independent girl who’s just trying to get her life together while still having fun.”

Her aunt, Jenny Zakovich of South Milwaukee, Wis., said Micayla’s friends told family members they tried to carry her out of the theater but were instructed to leave her.

“She was coughing and she fell to the ground, and that’s when the police or whoever was trying to help her ushered them out and said ‘There is nothing you can do,’” Zakovich said. “That makes me think she was critical and they couldn’t move her.”

Micayla did not have her ID, her aunt said.

Greg Medek called his sister Friday morning.

“He was absolutely hysterical, just sobbing, ‘I want to get my baby and bring her home,’” Zakovich said. “He feels she is lying on the floor of the theater and it is making him insane. His 81-year-old mother here, she is hysterical, she doesn’t know what to do. When I asked how his wife is doing, he said, ‘Not good.’”

Medek and Micayla’s older sister, Amanda, spent much of Friday going from hospital to hospital, showing Micayla’s picture to law enforcement officials, not knowing if she was alive.

“I just want to hear she’s not one of the ones laying in the theater,” her aunt said. “I keep looking at her Facebook page, hoping she will say, ‘I am OK.’ But there’s nothing.”

———

Deam reported from Aurora, Colo., and Nelson and Rojas from Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Times staff writers Robin Abcarian and Stephen Ceasar contributed to this report.

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