Moviegoers at a San Diego theater got more drama than they wished for Saturday night, when police officers came in during a film screening of Les Miserables and shot and critically wounded an armed gunman hiding in the theater.
Nobody else was injured at the Reading Cinemas Carmel Mountain theater, police said, and the gunman, who was identified as Tom Billodeaux of Escondido is being treated at an area hospital after he was shot in the arm and chest, reports Fox News.
Police started searching for Billodeaux after witnesses saw him and his girlfriend getting into a fight across the street from the theater. A shop owner next to the Cineplex reported police shut down the shopping center parking lot and were stopping cars and checking stores to find the man. They turned their attention to the theater after learning an armed man had gone in there.
Police searched theater by theater until they found him in one with about 15 other people. Police Capt. Terry McManus said Billodeaux initially put his hands up, but then put them back down and pulled out a gun. Officers opened fire because they thought he was threatening their lives and those of the others in the theater.
The man hadn’t made any threats to the people in the theater, McManus said, but he’d left a suicide note in his apartment.