AURORA, Colo. — CONTENT WARNING: This story contains details about child sex assault charges.
A former Aurora Police Department officer who responded to the 2012 theater shooting has been arrested on child sex assault charges, according to court documents.
Michael Hawkins, 55, was arrested earlier this month in Douglas County. He faces seven counts of sex assault on a child by a person in a position of trust and one count of child abuse, according to court records.
According to an arrest affidavit, Hawkins is accused of raping a girl and groping other children. The investigation started in 2022, but the accusations date back more than 20 years.
Hawkins was one of the law enforcement officers who responded after a gunman opened fire during a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" at the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora on July 20, 2012. Thirteen souls were killed, and 70 were injured.
Hawkins, then an officer, carried the body of 6-year-old victim Veronica Moser-Sullivan out of the theater. He also took two of the wounded in his car to University Hospital.
In a 2017 interview with 9NEWS, Hawkins said he was still haunted by what he had to do that night.
“There was a period of time when it became sort of a PTSD experience for me to carry my daughter upstairs to bed,” Hawkins said at the time.
Eventually, Hawkins said he got an opportunity to tell Veronica’s parents what had happened.
“It was important to me that they knew that she was taken out by a daddy, and that I have a daughter that age, and that I am very cognizant of what was lost,” he said in 2017.
Hawkins medically retired from the department as a sergeant in January 2018, the Aurora Police Department said.