Father of Colorado supermarket gunman thought he could be possessed by an evil spirit

BOULDER, Colorado — The father of a mentally ill man who shot and killed 10 people at a Colorado supermarket testified at his trial Tuesday that he believed his son was possessed by an evil spirit before the attack.

Sometime before the 2021 Boulder attack, Moustafa Alissa recalled waking up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and his son, Ahmad Alissa, telling him to go talk to a man who was in his room. Moustafa Alissa said they walked to his son’s room together and no one was there.

Moustafa Alissa also said his son sometimes talked to himself and broke a car key that he feared was being used to track him, corroborating Monday’s testimony. from his wifeHe said he didn’t know exactly what was wrong with his son, but that in his native Syria they say someone who behaves like this is possessed by an evil spirit, or djinn.

“We thought he was probably possessed by a ghost or something,” Moustafa Alissa said in court through an Arabic interpreter.

Ahmad Alissa was diagnosed with a severe case of schizophrenia after the shooting and was only deemed mentally competent to stand trial last year after a doctor prescribed him the strongest antipsychotic medication available. No one disputes that he was the supermarket shooter, but he has pleaded guilty not guilty by reason of insanity.

The defense argues that he should not be found guilty because he was legally insane and unable to tell the difference between right and wrong at the time of the shooting.

Prosecutors and forensic psychologists who evaluated him in court say that despite his mental illness, he was not delusional and knew what he was doing when he launched the attack. They point to the planning and research he did to prepare for it and his fear of going to jail afterward as evidence that Alissa knew what he was doing was wrong. But the psychologists said they believe the voices played a role in the attack and do not believe the attack would have happened if he had not been mentally ill.

When asked why Moustafa Alissa had not sought treatment for his son, prosecutor Michael Dougherty said it would be very difficult for his family to have a reputation as someone with a “crazy son.”

“It’s a disgrace in our culture,” he said.

During questioning, Moustafa Alissa, whose family owns several restaurants in the Denver area, also admitted that Ahmad Alissa had promised to return a gun he had that had jammed a few days before the shooting and that he had been to the gun range with his brothers at least once. Despite his concerns about his son’s mental state, he said he had done nothing to try to take the guns away from him.

Dougherty suggested that perhaps his son’s condition wasn’t as bad as his family now portrays it.

“He was not normal, but we also didn’t expect him to do what he did,” Moustafa Alissa said.