As authorities try to piece together the motivations of James Holmes, who allegedly went on a shooting spree at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" in Aurora, Colorado, a researcher at the University of Colorado School of Medicine Neuroscience program—where Holmes was a PhD candidate before recently deciding to drop out—fails to recall anything suspicious about the 24-year-old man.
"He appeared to be a normal guy," said a member of neuroscientist Nancy Zahniser's lab. "I never heard him talk though," he added. "Pretty quiet."
The researcher, who declined to give his name, said that Holmes was a rotational student, doing stints in different labs before settling in one to complete his PhD research. He noted that in March Holmes did a rotation in the lab of Mark Dell'Aqua, who studies the role of kinase/phosphatase signaling complexes in channel and transcription factor regulation associated with learning, memory, and mental ...
