Stephen Barton suffered these injuries in the Aurora movie theater shooting. Now, back home in Connecticut, he is finding he has ties to...

Stephen Barton suffered these injuries in the Aurora movie theater shooting. Now, back home in Connecticut, he is finding he has ties to the Sandy Hook School shooting.



SOUTHBURY, Conn. - Stephen Barton, who was on a cross-country trip when he was shot inside an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, lives about ten minutes from Newtown, Connecticut.

Stephen Barton, 22, and a friend were riding their bicycles west from Virginia Beach to San Francisco on a trip they'd been planning for about three years when they decided to go to the midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises."

A little more than 20 minutes into the movie, a gunman opened fire from the front-right corner of the theater where they were sitting. Barton was hit and fell to the ground.

Doctors told him he was shot in the neck, struck by shrapnel on his right arm and chest, and his face was cut up. Debris was removed during surgery, and he was put on a breathing tube.

Now home in Southbury, Connecticut, Barton found personal ties to the victims of another horrific mass shooting.

"Even now I'm discovering personal connections to the elementary school, just people I know who either were working there or knew people who have been killed," he said. "I never would have thought in a thousand years that this community, this small community right down the road from where I grew up would be affected by gun violence in this way."

12 people were killed and 58 were injured in the shooting in Aurora.

26 were killed by Adam Lanza inside Sandy Hook School, Connecticut State Police said. One other murder, Lanza's own mother, was found at the family's home.

Barton said both experiences have affected him profoundly.

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