The Denver Post reports that Chantel Blunk, widow of Aurora theater shooting victim Jonathon Blunk, has filed a lawsuit against Dr. Lynne Fenton, the Colorado University psychiatrist who was treating the alleged killer, James Holmes.
The suit claims that less than a month before Holmes went on a shooting rampage in the Century Aurora 16 theater that killed 12 people and injured 70 others, he had told Fenton “that he fantasized about killing a lot of people.” Fenton warned the CU’s Behavioral Evaluation and Threat Assessment team, but didn’t go any further or put Holmes on a 72-hour psychiatric hold. The five-page lawsuit went on to say that when a campus police officer presented asked Fenton if Holmes should be apprehended and placed on a psychiatric hold, Fenton “rejected the idea.”
But a lawyer who is representing some of the shooting victims in suits against Cinemark said that Fenton is being accused of failing to act rather than actions that caused harm. “There are so many possibilities that stem from failure to act,” he said, “it is almost like Monday morning quarterbacking after the Broncos lose.”
According to the Post, “The lawsuit says Blunk and her children have suffered loss of companionship, emotional and psychological distress, and economic damages in an amount greater than $75,000.”
