Century Rio 24 reopens Monday following fatal shooting

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – It’s been a week since the Century Rio 24 movie theater closed their doors following a fatal shooting.

“I think it is on our minds, it’s on everyone’s mind. But living in a bubble is something that we’ve had to deal with the pandemic, and you see the stuff on the news every day. But it is realistic that most of us are pretty safe going out,” said Erik Smith, a movie-goer. 

From Indiana Jones to Elemental, the theater is reopen and set to have showings through the evening. 

Those KOB 4 spoke to are alert but say living in fear isn’t going to help. 

“It’s unfortunate what happened. There is chaos all around us and if you live in fear you are never going to experience anything, you are never going to live your life,” said Yvonne Cardon. 

“I don’t know that everyone needs to go through medal detectors and be wanded and all of that kind of stuff, but I think we should keep a closer eye on the people that come into the movie theater. Especially to keep our families safe,” said Smith. 

Others like Adrien Lawyer didn’t even realize it was the first day back.

“Before the pandemic I was a big movie-goer. I think I went 3-4 times a month, and now it has been very rare in the last three, or four years. So it is exciting to be coming back,” said Lawyer. 

The theater had a security car parked outside all day Monday. But they would not say how many were inside.

“I don’t know if what they are doing is all that can be done, maybe a little more. I never see security people at movie theaters, and maybe we should start,” said Smith.  

We reached out to their corporate office “Cinemark” multiple times to get more on the security measures or if anything has changed.  We are waiting to hear back on that.

Suspect Enrique Padilla appeared before a judge Monday and was ordered to remain in jail until trial.