A 19 year-old TikTok star is on life support and his 18 year-old friend is dead after they were shot during a screening of The Forever Purge at an almost-empty California movie theater.
Anthony Barajas is critically ill, while his friend Rylee Goodrich died after being gunned down during a screening of the dystopian vigilante horror movie at Regal Edwards Corona Crossings in Corona, California on Monday night.
Goodrich was pronounced dead on the scene from a gunshot to the back of the head, with Barajas rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment. Authorities said the two attended the movie together. It is not believed that they were dating as the teens both recently uploaded TikToks suggesting they were single.
Corona Police Department say that no murder weapon was found at the scene of the shooting, and they are not believed to have obtained any surveillance footage from the theater during the screening.
Just six tickets had been sold for the screening, with the youngsters’ bodies only discovered at 9:35pm after the film had ended, by staff who were conducting a ‘walk through’ to clean the theater.
It is unclear if the other four people who attended the screening realized what had happened, or if those moviegoers were involved in the shooting. Cops have offered no indication as to whether the shooting was targeted, or random.
Goodrich and Barajas were watching ‘The Forever Purge’ on Monday when in a nearly empty theater when they were shot.
A Corona Police Department said no arrests had been made, and raised the specter of more than one shooter being behind the crime.
Their statement read: ‘Detectives are conducting follow up on all investigative leads with hopes of identifying the person(s) responsible for this heinous crime.’
Corona Police Department Cpl. Tobias Kouroubacalis told KTLA that some evidence had been recovered, but did not offer further detail.
He said: ‘We don’t know what exactly happened in there.
‘We’re still taking a step-by-step process, going through every seat, going through every part of that movie theater to find any kind of evidence we have, and also asking for the public’s help at the same time.’
Goodrich’s cousin, Ashley Cole told CBS that the family is having trouble believing that the shooting was a random attack. ‘When there’s only six people in a movie theater, to me, that’s not what I imagine someone that’s not going with intentions to kill someone to do.’
Police are following up with the four other people who bought tickets to ‘The Forever Purge.’ Kouroubacalis told the Press Enterprise that he did not know if cops would be investigating whether the movie’s theme could be related to the shooting.
The Forever Purge tells the story of Mexican migrants targeted by vigilantes during an annual US government ‘purge’, during which all crime is legal for 12 hours. It features frequent shoot-outs and violence, meaning the sounds of Barajas and Goodrich being shot may have been mistaken for the action onscreen by other moviegoers.
