COLORADO SHOOTING: Pleasant Hill Kids In Same Theater

Three Pleasant Hill students were in the same building, when the Aurora, Colorado shooting took place.

The three were also watching the latest Batman movie in an adjacent theater.

Twenty-two year old Ryan Ruden, his 19-year-old sister Haley, and their 14-year-old brother Pete were attending the midnight showing of the Dark Knight Rises when the gun fire broke out.

“There were explosions kind of on the right side we thought they were fire crackers like part of the movie but a friend that was sitting next to me started bleeding, started yelling,” said Ryan Ruden in a telephone interview.

Like many movie-goers, Ryan originally thought the gunfire was part of the movie.  He was snapped back to reality when he realized his friend from Ohio had been shot in the arm.  Ryan, being the oldest, then turned his attention to his younger siblings.

“Everybody was running and yelling and cops were coming up with shot guns, I was just trying to get everyone together so we could leave and try and take care of my brother and sister,” says Ryan Ruden.

Once the Ruden children made it to the parking lot, Haley called her father, who was asleep at a nearby hotel.

“We’re dead asleep and Haley called me at 12:43 and said Dad we’re at the theatre there was a shooting she was hysterical you couldn’t understand what was going on,” said Roger Ruden in a telephone interview.

Roger Ruden says his three children are understandably shaken, especially his youngest son and daughter Haley, who was hit by shrapnel.

“My daughter said she felt fragments hitting her it must have been when the bullets came through the wall that the pieces of wood or plaster pelting her a little bit,” says Roger Ruden.

The Ruden family is attending a conference in Denver this week.

Roger Ruden says when the kids went back to the conference this morning there was a moment of silence for the victims of the shooting.