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An outing to catch one of the season’s most anticipated films turned into a panic-filled afternoon for some moviegoers Friday.
Armed officers rushed to the Harkins Mountain Grove 16 theaters in Redlands, where people had just finished watching the latest installment of the “Avengers” franchise, fearing there might a gunman inside. Witnesses said when the movie was over, a man stood up and started yelling in what sounded like a preacher’s sermon.
“I think when he said, ‘If you were to die tonight, would your passage to heaven be guaranteed?’ — something along those lines — I think that’s when people started panicking,” Susie Arias told CBS2 News.
Arias said she and her partner were able to walk out, but they said people behind them started running and pushing in an effort to exit quickly.
“That’s when the kind of chaos happened in the little exit, where people were jumping over the railings, and kind of falling over, twisting their ankles and hitting their head,” recalled Adrian Arias.
In footage taken immediately after the incident, a man can be seen limping out of the theater. Police said a woman hit her head and had to be hospitalized.