SAN DIEGO (AP) – A man who lives next door to the California family of a man suspected of shooting dozens of people at a Colorado movie theater says he was a loner.
Tom Mai is a retired electrical engineer who is neighbors with the family of 24-year-old James Holmes on a quiet, well-to-do San Diego street of two story homes with red tile roofs.
Mai says he said hello to Holmes once in a while but seemed to be shy. He says the family lived there about 10 years. The mother is a nurse and the father is a manager at a software company. The suspect has a younger sister.
Police in San Diego read a statement Friday morning from Holmes’ family members. The family asked the media to respect their privacy. They say they’re cooperating with authorities in San Diego and Aurora, Colo., and are trying to process everything.
San Diego police spokeswoman Andra Brown says there’s nothing to suggest the family had any involvement.
Mai says the mother told him Holmes couldn’t find a job after earning a master’s degree from a public university in California.
Spokeswoman Jacque Montgomery says Holmes was studying neuroscience in a Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado-Denver graduate school. University officials earlier said he was a student at the university’s medical school.
Montgomery says Holmes enrolled in the program in June 2011 and was in the process of withdrawing.
(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
