Prosecutors Cite Film’s Theme in Theater Shooting : Violence: Gunman told investigators he opened fire during ‘Schindler’s List’ chase scene ‘to test God.’ Defense contends weapon went off accidentally.

Calling it a disturbing case of life imitating art, prosecutors said Monday that a man who shot a woman in the back during a showing of “Schindler’s List” told investigators he pulled the trigger “to test God” and protect Jews from danger.

James Michael Kirby, 45, critically wounded Ellen Campbell, 40, as she sat at the Horton Plaza theater in downtown San Diego on Jan. 6. He fired one round from a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol.

“In the movie, Nazis were chasing Jews down the street,” Campbell testified at Kirby’s preliminary hearing, where he was bound over for trial. “And they were shooting them in the back. And at that time, I was shot in the back.”

The shooting left Campbell with a 14-inch scar, a partially collapsed lung and a terror at traveling in public alone, she said.

Kirby remains jailed on $300,000 bail, booked on felony assault with a semiautomatic weapon and carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.

At a time when Congress is debating the effect of television and movie violence on real violence, prosecutors said Kirby’s actions offer a graphic example that, at times, even the best of films offer a platform for violent imitation.

“The movie definitely factored into it,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Lamborn said.

The case is being watched closely in Hollywood, where Marvin Levy, marketing director for director Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, said Monday that the Kirby shooting appears to be an isolated case.

“If ever a movie speaks against things like that, it’s this film,” Levy said.

Investigators said the shooting occurred at a point in the film when Nazi troopers were liquidating a Jewish ghetto in Krakow, Poland, and that Kirby’s actions appeared to mimic the footage unfolding in front of him, which moments earlier depicted gunshots to the head.

They say that although Campbell was a victim of circumstance, the movie--Spielberg’s critically acclaimed epic about the Holocaust--triggered a shooting that was clearly deliberate.

Raymond Vecchio, Kirby’s attorney, argued Monday that the shooting was accidental. His client admits pulling the trigger, Vecchio said, but thought the safety mechanism was positioned to keep it from firing.

“He did not expect the gun to go off,” Vecchio told the judge, adding that Kirby feels “profoundly guilty, embarrassed and upset” and that his actions were “horribly irresponsible.”

He brought the gun only to protect him and his mother, Vecchio said, after hearing reports of recent gang violence at the Horton Plaza shopping center. She accompanied Kirby to the 11:30 a.m. matinee.

But police offered a different account of Kirby’s explanation, saying that, shortly after fleeing the theater, he was arrested alone in nearby La Mesa, where he then made statements about wanting to test God and protect Jews in general from harm.

“He said that he had changed his religion from Catholicism to Orthodox Judaism,” said San Diego Police Detective Ronald Thill, who interviewed Kirby. “He said, ‘I feel for these people so much. I know a lot of Jews, and they’re all beautiful people. To see that happen (the slaughter of Jews on screen), I just took out my gun from my back pocket and began squeezing the trigger.’ ”

Morris Casuto, regional director of the San Diego chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, said Monday that, despite Kirby’s claims of converting to Judaism, he had never heard of him, nor of his bizarre claims.

The defense called as its only witness a forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Mark Mills, who despite saying that Kirby appeared “compulsively honest” and remorseful for the shooting, called him a paranoid individual who was not clinically insane but “clearly an odd duck.”