Feature: Riveting testimony at Colorado shooter trial

The first day of testimony in the mass murder trial of James Holmes, who shot and killed 12 and injured 58 in a movie theater in 2012, drew tears and gasps from a packed courtroom, as witnesses described a scene of absolute chaos and carnage in the theater the night of the shooting. < Witnesses described "feeling terror," hearing people screaming the names of their loved ones, praying to God before they died, stepping over bodies, slipping in blood and the complete horror that resulted from one of the worst mass murders in U.S. history.

Holmes, a "brilliant" neuroscience graduate student, wearing a button-down, collared shirt, sat without emotion with his parents during the proceedings.

Holmes has plead not guilty by reason of insanity, after admitting to unloading hundreds of bullets into an unsuspecting movie audience on July 20, 2012.

Holmes faces 166 counts of murder and attempted murder.

He faces the death penalty if found sane at the time of the shooting.

The day's last testimony was from 16-year-old Kaylan Bailey, 13 when the massacre occurred, who took the stand and described seeing pregnant Ashley Moser, 25, "jolt...and fall down," on top of her already hit 6-year-old daughter, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, after taking a gunshot.

"Ashley kept screaming Veronica's name" before she fell, Bailey said.

Bailey made a frantic, emergency "911" call as Holmes paced the aisles and slaughtered moviegoers inside the packed theater.

"I need help!" Bailey screamed to the dispatcher in a recording that was replayed for jurors on Tuesday.

The most riveting testimony of the trial came from Sgt. Michael Hawkins of the Aurora police force, one of the heralded "first responders," who told the jury, "I thought we were going into a gunfight" when he entered the theater.

Instead, Hawkins entered a scene of carnage. He first "encountered a man who had taken a high-caliber bullet wound to the head. Most of his head was gone," Hawkins recalled.

Hawkins then saw a "pale, bald man sitting upright who was also gone," before he found 6-year-old Veronica.

"I lifted her shirt and saw that she had been shot in the abdomen," said Hawkins, who then grabbed the girl and ran from the theater while "onlookers screamed."

"I was aware of her bleeding, I felt her bladder expire, I realized she was probably gone," Hawkins recounted, pausing, to choke back tears.

Hawkins rushed Veronica to a nearby ambulance, but "realized the little girl had died" in his arms. The entire courtroom was silent in a moment of shared anguish.

Meanwhile, at the time, her pregnant mother was lying face down and "moaning" due to a gunshot that paralyzed her from the waist down. She lost her baby, her daughter, and is confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

Holmes, shackled to the floor, slowly revolved in his chair, watching the proceedings, as Prodeo Patria, 17, described seeing his father carrying his bleeding mother on his back from the theater.

Patria, 14 at the time of the massacre, was shot in the back as he fled.

"I heard loud bangs, people coughing (from tear gas) and a man spazzing out, who kicked me in the head and knocked off my glasses," Patria said.

An Indonesian family also took the stand. Anggiat Mora came to the theater with his wife and teenage son, who were both victims of gunfire, but survived. Mora's wife, Rita Paulina, was shot in the leg and arm, and a photo exhibit showed a grotesque, 12-inch stapled wound on her arm, the result of several surgeries.

Perhaps the saddest testimony of the day came from Katie Medley, pregnant with her first child, who saw people "shot in the head with blood pouring down their faces." Her husband Caleb was shot in the face and has been confined to a wheelchair since the shooting.

As her husband choked in his own blood, "I squeezed his hand and told him I would take care of our (unborn) child if he died," she told the courtroom in tears.

Caleb Medley, an aspiring stand-up comedian, was shot in the face and underwent several, long surgeries. He had part of his brain removed, but took the stand in his wheelchair and mumbled a few incoherent words before being released by Judge Carlos Samour, Jr.

The defense has pointed out that the terrible tales of tragedy are irrelevant to the case, because it is all about whether Holmes was sane or insane at the time of the killings.

The prosecution will fill the next few months with personal tragedies, hoping the emotional appeal will persuade the jury to convict Holmes, despite his clear diagnosis with extreme schizophrenia.

One painful testimony came from Derick Spruel, an Air Force communications specialist, whose friend Jesse Childress took a shotgun blast to the chest and died, face down, in a pool of blood.

"'Jesse, Jesse,' I screamed," Spruel said. "I grabbed him, and shook him," as he died.

Childress loved action heroes, and bought four tickets to the Batman premiere for three of his friends, all members of the military's elite communications cryptology division at nearby Buckley Air Force Base.

Childress and Spruel "loved to joke around" and had become fast friends, according to the testimony of Spruel's wife Chichi.

"They're all geeks, and they were developing a deep friendship," Chichi Spruel said. "Derick was shaking him and screaming his name," she told the courtroom. "I never saw Jesse again." Endi