Shooting Suspect Was Withdrawing From Ph.D. Program at U. of Colorado

The man who the police suspect killed 12 people and injured dozens of others early Friday morning in a mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., was a Ph.D. student in neuroscience at the University of Colorado at Denver who was in the process of voluntarily withdrawing from the program, the university said in a statement on Friday. The suspect, James E. Holmes, 24, had enrolled in June 2011. According to the statement, the police said he was most likely last on the campus in June. Mr. Holmes is in police custody, and the authorities gave no motive for the attack.

Updated (7/20/2012, 5:41 p.m.): The Washington Post reports that Mr. Holmes performed poorly on his comprehensive exams this spring and was in “serious academic trouble,” according to a faculty member who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity.