(CNN) — There were words said between two men at a movie theater, but nothing that merited the one to fatally shoot the other, the victim’s wife said Thursday.
Former Tampa police officer Curtis Reeves is in custody, accused of shooting Chad Oulson at the Wesley Chapel, Florida, movie theater on January 13.
Chad Oulson’s wife, Nicole Oulson, appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday to give her recollections of that day.
Oulson was wearing a cast, a result of an injury she suffered in the shooting.
“The gunshot wound to my finger is the least of my worries right now,” Oulson told ABC. “The real pain is in my heart and that will take a long time, if ever, to get over.”
Reeves, 71, got into an altercation with Chad Oulson because he was texting the couple’s babysitter during the previews for “Lone Survivor,” police said.
The 6-foot-1, 270-pound Reeves, who was also with his wife for the matinee at the Grove 16 Theatre in suburban Tampa, left the auditorium, apparently to complain to management, police said. Reeves returned “irritated,” a witness said. The argument continued and popcorn was thrown.
According to the incident report, Reeves told police he was hit with an “unknown object” in the face, and then, fearing he was being attacked, pulled a handgun from his pocket and shot Chad Oulson.
“It was a couple of words. No threats. No harm. No nothing,” Nicole Oulson said on ABC. “We’re both very respectful when the movie is on, that we put our phones away, so he took a couple of seconds just to check the phone to make sure there were no messages about our daughter.”
A defense attorney, who tried and failed to get a judge to grant the Reeves bail, said that the former police officer was the victim and that Chad Oulson was the agressor.
Nicole Oulson’s attorney, TJ Grimaldi, dismissed that idea.
It shouldn’t matter what Chad Oulson threw at Reeves, the attorney told CNN.
“There is absolutely no reason that this should have escalated to the level that it did, especially as quickly as it did,” the attorney told “Good Morning America.”
