It could have been anyone ? but it was Paul Schrum.
The opening scenes of “X-Men: The Last Stand” had already started when Mujtaba Jabbar, now 25, walked into the movie theater with his .357-caliber handgun and sat down near Schrum. For months, Jabbar had pondered the act of killing a perfect stranger, according to court testimony. Now it would happen.
In a courtroom filled with friends and relatives of the 62-year-old grandfather shot to death that June evening in Owings Mills, Jabbar pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree murder. He was found not criminally responsible at the time of the incident and committed to a state psychiatric hospital until he is no longer deemed a threat to himself or others.
State doctors said Jabbar suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.
“He went to watch a movie and never came home,” Rona Schrum, Paul?s widow, said in court. “I lost my best friend, lover and companion.”
Schrum was shot four times as he sat alone near the back of the theater, according to court testimony. Jabbar, a Loyola College graduate, then walked out to the lobby of the Loews Valley Center 9 and told an employee ? and later police ? what he had done, prosecutor Rachel Cogen said.
“I killed someone because I was mad … just because of the way things are going in my life,” Jabbar said, according to Cogen.
Jabbar?s family wrote the Schrums a letter that was submitted to the court expressing grief over the murder.
“Each and every night we pray that he may be forgiven for his tragic act and that he might recover from his woeful ailment,” the letter says. “Yet this is only a fraction of the pain you and your family must endure.”
Norman Schrum also submitted a letter describing his brother as a loyal graduate of Baltimore City College who always wore his school ring and loved ice skating andfootball games.
“We would bundle up in layers and sit outside drinking coffee out of a thermos in the old Memorial Stadium,” Norman Schrum wrote. “There will be no forgetting, but only honoring the memories of the past.”
