Mother of Colorado supermarket guman says he is ‘sick’ and denies knowing about plan

BOULDER, Colorado — The last time Khadija Ahidid saw her son, he came to breakfast in 2021, looking “homeless” with big hair. She offered to give him $20 so he could get a shave or haircut that day. Hours later, he shot and killed 10 people at a grocery store in the college town of Boulder.

She saw Ahmad Alissa for the first time since then during his murder trial on Monday, and repeatedly said that her son, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia after the shooting, was ill. When one of Alissa’s attorneys, Kathryn Herold, introduced her to the jury, Herold asked how she knew Alissa. Ahidid replied, “How do I know him? He’s ill,” she said through an Arabic interpreter in her first public comments about her son and the shooting.

Alissa, who emigrated from Syria with his family as a child, began acting strangely in 2019. She thought he was being followed by the FBI, talked to herself and isolated himself from the rest of the family, Ahidid said. His condition worsened after he contracted COVID a few months before the shooting, she said, adding that he also became “fat” and stopped showering as often.

There was no evidence that Alissa was being treated for a mental illness before the shooting. After the shooting, his family later reported that he had been acting strangely, such as breaking a car key and taping over a laptop camera because he thought the devices were being used to track him. Some family members thought he might be possessed by an evil spirit, or djinn, the defense said.

No one, including Alissa’s attorneys, disputes that he was the shooter. Alissa has pleaded guilty not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting. 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 Alissa, despite being mentally ill, 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 prison afterward as evidence that Alissa knew what he was doing was wrong.

Alissa mostly looked down as his mother testified and photos of him as a happy toddler and teenager on the beach were shown on the screen. There was no apparent mother-son exchange in court, but Alissa dabbed at his eyes with a tissue after she left.

The psychiatrist in charge of Alissa’s treatment at the state psychiatric hospital testified earlier in the day that Alissa refused to have visitors during his more than two-year stay there.

When questioned by prosecutor Michael Dougherty, Ahidid said her son had not told her what he planned to do on the day of the shooting.

She said she thought the large package containing a gun that Alissa had brought home shortly before the shooting was a piano.

“I swear to God we didn’t know what was in that package,” she said.

Dougherty said she told detectives shortly after the shooting that she thought it might have been a violin.

After being reminded of an earlier statement to police, Ahidid admitted to hearing a banging noise in the house and one of her other sons said Alissa had a gun that had jammed. Alissa said he would return it, she testified.

She indicated that no one in the extended family living in the house had taken up the issue to make sure. She said: “Everyone has their own job.”

“Nobody is free for anybody,” she said.