Feature: Third day of Colorado shooter trial reveals heroes, carnage

Details of living hell and heroic rescues from victims of a deadly shooting at a packed Colorado movie theater nearly three years ago were described in court Wednesday, as the mass murder trial of shooter James Holmes entered the third day.

Holmes, pleading "not-guilty by reason of insanity", admitted to bursting through the back door of the Century 16 movie theater and ripping hundreds of bullets into the crowd, killing 12 and injuring 58.

Five police responders, two firefighters, and three victims described the horrific scene at the theater in Denver's suburb Aurora on July 20, 2012.

"I could feel the ground sliding beneath my feet," said Aurora police officer Tomas Campagna, who arrived at the scene minutes after the attack.

"The smell was horrible...it was fecal matter, urine, blood, sweat, and my feet were slipping on it," Campagna recalled. "There were bodies everywhere."

A prosecution strategy mixing emotionally debilitating stories from survivors with first-hand, gripping accounts from police with an aim to persuade jurors of Holmes' guilt regardless of his apparent insanity, was used in court.

If Holmes is found to be sane at the time of the shooting, he would face death penalty.

A stark contrast was drawn Wednesday between the extreme excitement and ebullient expectations that preceded the midnight Batman premiere showing, and the "unfathomable horror" that reversed those emotions within seconds.

"Sully jumped up and hoots and hollers, and everybody joined in," remembered Christina Blache, who came to the theater with her co-worker Alex Sullivan on his 27th birthday. "We were all very excited."

Blache, a senior manager at the restaurant chain Red Robin, broke down several times describing her last minutes with her close friend Sullivan.

Sullivan convinced Blache to arrive at the theater almost seven hours early to get tickets for their midnight premiere so they would get good seats, she recalled.

"Whoosh," Blache made the sound of a tear gas canister apparently thrown by Holmes.

"It went right over our heads. We thought it was an antic," she said, a misconception shared by many survivors, who thought the tear gas was a prank.

But that perception changed in seconds.

"It looks like a camera flash, when an automatic rifle is fired," Blache told the courtroom, remembering her U.S. military experience in Baghdad, and the flashes she then saw from the front of the theater.

Witnesses then described seeing a figure dressed in black with a helmet and tactical gear, moving slowly and firing a high-caliber, U.S.-made AR-15 assault rifle into the crowd.

"During a pause, some of us ran from the theater," said Blache, as eight of her friends escaped, leaving her and mortally wounded Sullivan behind.

Survivors described falling down between the seats to avoid bullets that were "whizzing over" their heads. People were "screaming in terror" for 10-15 minutes after the shooting started, with tear gas chocking their lungs and the darkness creating an "eerie, surreal scene," testimonies revealed.

The accounts told by 10 witnesses Wednesday were graphic. Several bloody pictures of wounds sustained by victims were shown to jurors.

Blache, who was shot twice in the right leg and suffered a shattered femur, now two inches shorter than her left leg, refused to leave the scene despite her injuries.

She explained to the jury she felt responsible for her younger, 19-year-old fellow worker Jasmine Kennedy, who was less-severely wounded.

Blache finally made it to the hospital, where she survived and later underwent five surgeries.8 Other acts of heroism were also told in court Wednesday, with wounded victims re-telling how they gave up their chance to go to the hospital in favor of those who were more seriously wounded.

The most powerful testimony came at the end of the day from Bernd Hoefler, a 13-year firefighter who delivered an emotional testimony about identifying dead bodies in the theater.

Hoefler, driving a 100-foot ladder truck, jumped several grass islands in the theater's parking lot to get to the rear of the theater where the survivors were lying in the alley.

"We came across blood and bodies, it was like a horror film," Hoefler remembered.

"There were people in costumes lying on the ground. I saw people shot in the back, guts that were eviscerated, a woman whose hand was blown off," he said, bowing his head. Endi