Wrong James Holmes Bombarded With Facebook Friend Requests After Aurora Dark Knight Rises Shooting

This James Holmes, a resident of Denver, near where the shooting took place, said he is not the same man as the 24-year-old former University of Colorado medical student dropout, who is suspected of carrying out the mass shooting at the theater.

Around 7:30 a.m., the man being mistaken for suspected shooter James Holmes posted on Facebook that the large number of Facebook users sending him Facebook requests have the wrong man. He added that they shouldn't even be trying to contact the mass shooter and questioned their bizarre curiousity of the suspected Aurora gunman.

I appreciate the fact that you are trying to become better-informed about the occurrences last night in Aurora, but you have been somewhat mislead [sic], in that I am not the man who did it. I am not a 24-year-old gun-slinging killer from Aurora, I am a 22-year-old book-slinging mass eater from Littleton, the other James Holmes posted. Somewhat distinct, I would assume. But I would appreciate if you would read this particular post an not assume that it would be interesting to be friends with someone on Facebook who is very probably going to be in jail and not be able to confirm your friend requests anyway, or even be friends with his girlfriend, who had the rather interesting experience of having to tell someone she had a job interview with that she is not, in fact dating a serial killer. James Holmes happens to be a pretty common name, surprisingly, so try not to jump the gun.

He signed off on the post with the salutation, a different guy named James Holmes.

The post has more than 130 shares on Facebook and friends of the Denver James Holmes said he is not the kind of person who would carry out such a shocking crime.

You are one of the kindest souls I have known, and are the antithesis of violence, at this level or any other, said Tracy Theobald Briggs, a friend of the James Holmes being mistaken for the suspected Aurora shooter.

How unfortunate that you share and name and state of residence with someone that would commit such an atrocity, added the other James Holmes' cousin, Frances Barthle Gonzalez. Shame on the people with such morbid curiosity that they would want to friend you because they think you are him! I hope that the friend requests stop soon, dear cousin. 

The case of mistaken identity has been shared on Facebook and the other James Holmes said he appreciates how everyone is trying to explain how he was not involved in the mass shooting that rocked the country.

There have been so many people who have been sharing this and saying things like 'This poor guy just happens to share the same name, don't make his life difficult just for a coincidence,' like that. It's actually been a very positive thing, looking at those sorts of posts, he said. Even in the face of such a terrible tragedy, the fact that people are willing to say 'Let's lay blame where it belongs' is a very heartening thing. 

The suspected shooter James Holmes was a dropped out of the University of Colorado medical school earlier this year, according to the school.

According to the other James Holmes' Facebook profile, he is a cashier at a Target in Littleton, Colo., and graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in 2011. Ironically, Littleton is best known as the site of the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. The massacre was the deadliest school shooting in the nation's history.