UA Theaters Official Calls Shooting ‘Isolated Case’

An official at United Artists Theaters on Friday defended security measures at the nationwide chain, a day after a woman watching “Schindler’s List” was shot and wounded by a man sitting behind her in the audience at a downtown San Diego movie theater. The shooting touched off panic among many patrons.

“It’s a very isolated type of case,” said Ray Nutt, vice president of corporate operations. “There isn’t anything I foresee that United Artists could have done to prevent this situation.” He declined to discuss what security measures were being employed but said there were no plans to install metal detectors.

The shooting occurred during scenes of graphic Nazi violence in the critically acclaimed Steven Spielberg film on the Holocaust.

Police identified the suspect as James Michael Kirby, 45, of San Diego. Kirby was arrested late Thursday afternoon in the San Diego-area community of La Mesa for driving erratically. Police said that a routine check of his name showed he is the owner of the gun used in the theater shooting.

Police were unsure of the shooter’s motives. Irene Kirby, the mother of the suspect, said Friday that she was with her son when the gun went off and that the shooting happened accidentally.

She said she and her son were separated during the pandemonium that followed the gunfire but met up later at their car and left the mall without meeting with authorities. Her son was alone when he was arrested about four hours after the shooting.

Asked if the shooting could have been accidental, San Diego Police Lt. Jim Collins said simply: “The man has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon and will remain in custody.” Jail authorities noted that Kirby’s bail was increased on Friday afternoon to $500,000.

Meanwhile, new details emerged Friday about the alleged shooter. Phillip Gay, a sociology professor at San Diego State University, told The Times on Friday that he was the target of a death threat Kirby made against him during the recently concluded fall semester.

Gay had given Kirby a failing grade in a course titled “Sociology of Mass Communications and Popular Culture.” He said the student telephoned him and said: “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to intimidate me. Well, let me tell you your days are numbered.”

Gay said he reported what he perceived as a death threat to the school’s campus police department, which launched an investigation that was then curtailed when the professor declined to pursue the matter further.

Campus police offered Gay bodyguard protection and urged him to report the matter to the San Diego Police Department, but he chose not to, saying he feared the attention it would bring.

“But having read what happened in the movie theater, I’m sorry now that I didn’t pursue the matter further,” Gay said. “If they had at least contacted him, he would have known somebody was watching him, was aware of his behavior. . . . If I had it to do over again, I’d follow through on a complaint.”

Lt. Collins said Friday that his department was pursuing the professor’s allegation. Collins said Kirby remains in custody in San Diego County Jail, booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.

Collins said Kirby fired a single round from a .38-caliber handgun that penetrated the back of the seat in front of him and critically injured 40-year-old secretary Ellen Campbell. After hours of surgery, her condition was upgraded to serious early Friday.

Collins said the shooting occurred at the moment in “Schindler’s List” when a wave of gunshot executions to the head was occurring in scenes that depict the Nazis’ brutal liquidation of a Jewish ghetto in Krakow, Poland.

Jewish leaders and officials at Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment said that until there was more information, it was too early to speculate if the shooting was a hate-generated crime or if the violence on the screen could have moved someone to violence in the theater.

“This is not a gang-type movie,” said Marvin Levy, a marketing consultant for Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, referring to a genre that has led to violent incidents at theaters in the past. “If ever there was a film totally different from that, it certainly is this.” He said that at some theaters, moviegoers have actually remained silent in their seats--as if in a church--as the end credits roll by because of the emotional tug of the film.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said there have been no reports elsewhere of “Schindler’s List”-related incidents of violence.

Meanwhile, theater officials said they believed their security was sufficient to protect its patrons, although they would not spell out what that security entailed.

Asked if they would ever install metal detectors like those used at airports to prevents guns from being brought onto airplanes, UA Vice President Nutt said: “No, I think that takes away from the entertainment experience. United Artists certainly doesn’t have plans to install metal detectors.”

At the same time, some patrons on Thursday criticized the company for not shutting down the theater at the popular Horton Plaza shopping mall downtown after the shooting. Movies such as “The Pelican Brief,” “Sister Act 2” and “The Air Up There” continued showing even as police investigated the shooting scene, and “Schindler’s List” resumed shortly thereafter.

“We made a decision to continue showing the film,” UA’s Nutt said. “There was really nothing to it. I believe this was a very isolated incident. . . . It’s very rare that we have something like this.”

United Artists has 420 theaters around the country, with 2,300 screens.

Welkos reported from Los Angeles and Granberry from San Diego.