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Centennial, Colo. • James Holmes' mother insisted Wednesday she would "have been crawling on all fours" to reach him had she known he was talking about killing people weeks before he ambushed a crowded Colorado movie theater.

Arlene Holmes said her son's campus psychiatrist never told her James Holmes had homicidal thoughts when she called in June 2012 and revealed he was quitting therapy and dropping out of school.

"We wouldn't be sitting here if she had told me that!" Holmes' mother said, her sobs rising to anger. "I would have been crawling on all fours to get to him. She never said he was thinking of killing people. She didn't tell me. She didn't tell me. She didn't tell me!"

"He was not a violent person. At least not until the event," Holmes' father, Robert Holmes, said earlier Wednesday in the sentencing phase of James Holmes' trial.

"The event" is a phrase Robert Holmes used several times to refer to his son's attack on the audience inside a darkened Colorado movie theater July 20, 2012, which killed 12 people, injured 70 others and makes James Holmes eligible for the death penalty.

Arlene Holmes was the defense's last witness in its portion of the sentencing phase. Others who testified included family friends, teachers and former neighbors who said the James Holmes they knew was shy, mild-mannered and polite — not the kind of young man who would gun down innocent strangers.

Closing arguments were scheduled for Thursday. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty; Holmes' attorneys are arguing for life in prison.

James Holmes on Wednesday declined his last opportunity to speak to the jury.

"I choose not to testify," he told the judge.

In her testimony, Arlene Holmes complained that the University of Colorado psychiatrist, Lynne Fenton, didn't respond to a message seeking more details about their son. They didn't know he was getting therapy and thought perhaps he was depressed or had Asperger's syndrome, Robert Holmes said.

Fenton testified earlier that she called James Holmes' parents, despite her concerns that she was violating her client's privacy, because she was trying to decide whether he posed a danger to himself or others.

A campus security official offered to detain Holmes for an involuntary hospital mental health commitment, but Fenton declined, in part because she said the parents told her he had always been withdrawn.

"Schizophrenia chose him; he didn't choose it, and I still love my son. I still do," Arlene Holmes said, choking up on the stand.

James Holmes enrolled in a prestigious neuroscience postgraduate program at the university in 2011. But his parents grew increasingly worried when he came home on his first winter break looking haggard and making odd facial expressions. He shared his fear of failure later that spring, but his parents said they had no idea he was descending into mental illness.

Death sentences must be unanimous. The jury already has decided Holmes was legally sane at the time of the attack. But his defense is hoping at least one juror will agree that his mental illness reduces his moral culpability so much that he deserves the mercy of a life sentence instead.