Lindy Alum Living in Aurora Shares Reaction to Theater Shootings

As he was trying to go to sleep in his home on Thursday night native turned Aurora, Colorado resident Steve Skalkowski heard the shrill sound of sirens.

"It sounded like every cop in Aurora was responding, so I knew something big was happening," Skalkowski told Lindenhurst Patch on Saturday.

And something big was happening less than a mile away from his home - the mass shooting at the Aurora Mall Theater during the midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises that, according to published reports, have left 12 dead and 59 injured.

Skalkowski told Patch he didn’t get up to figure out what was causing the sirens since he’d thrown his back out a few days before that.

"Then I received a text from my brother at 7 a.m. Eastern time asking if I was okay," he said. "I thought he saw a post on Facebook about my back. I texted back I was, but I was having a little trouble walking."

However, after several more texts it was clear something bigger was happening.

"Then I was up because the rest of my family and friends in New York were checking to see if I was okay," said Skalkowski, a former United States Army military police officer and current mortgage underwriter who now works at home.

He thought back to the night before when he'd gone down to cheer the softball team he usually plays with on Thursday nights. When they went out afterward one of his buddies was pushing to go see the new Batman movie at the Aurora Mall Theater.

"He urged us to go to the midnight show. But we scrapped the idea and went home," he said.

Thankfully, none of his friends ended up going, but he did find out later a former co-worker of his was in the theater adjacent to the one where the alleged shooter opened fire.

"The theater was showing the movie in multiple theaters simultaneously. He was there when the shooting started," Skalkowski said, noting he was okay, but "a mutual friend of ours had to go pick him up because he couldn't take his car from the lot or couldn't get to it."

Skalkowski said Aurora is somewhat back to normal now, though the theater is still the cordoned off as a crime scene.

"There's business as usual, but there's a malaise over everything, very somber. It's same kind of feeling after 9/11 - everyone's more polite and nicer," he said, adding it's a lot different when something like this happens in your town.

"If you don't know someone directly involved, then you might know a friend of a friend who was involved or hurt. It's scary, especially since it's so close."

But in the wake of the tragedy the Class of 1991 Lindenhurst alumnus is safe and decidedly staying in the Denver suburb he’s called home for the past 10 years - despite the occasional appeals to return from family and friends in Lindy and on Long Island who miss him.

"This has happened in other places, and there are crazy people everywhere you go," he said.