James Eagan Holmes, the suspect in the Colorado shooting rampage, is described as a quiet, standoffish, graduate student from San Diego who recently dropped out of a doctoral program at the University of Colorado medical school, where he had done research.

He graduated with honors from the University of California-Riverside two years ago.

A profile of the 24-year-old suspect is beginning to emerge hours after a gunman opened fire in a crowded movie theater showing the new Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, killing 12 people, including a 6-year-old girl. Police say 59 others were wounded or injured by tear gas the gunman set off before opening fire.

Update at 5:56 p.m. ET: So far, there are no indications that Holmes had any run-ins with the law before today, not even a traffic ticket, the Associated Press says.

Jackie Mitchell, a furniture mover who lives several blocks from Holmes' Aurora apartment building, said he shared a beer with him Tuesday at a neighborhood bar. They talked about the Denver Broncos' Peyton Manning.

"We just talked about football. He had a backpack and geeky glasses and seemed like a real intelligent guy and I figured he was one of the college students," he told AP, adding that he had a "swagger."

Update at 5:11 p.m. ET: The University of Colorado School of Medicine says Holmes was not "a medical student," USA TODAY's Haya El Nasser reports.

From June 2011 to June 2012, Holmes was a graduate student in the neuroscience program and did research in buildings on the Anschutz Medical Campus, says Dan Meyers, the medical school's communications director. "He was in some of the research towers," Meyers says, and "voluntarily left that program."

Parts of research facilities are secured and require card entry. "His access was terminated," Meyers says. "He was in the process of completing withdrawal."

Meyers would not say if any particular event led to Holmes' withdrawal and repeated, "He voluntarily withdrew."

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Colo. suspect is grad school dropout