DENVER — A man sitting in his van after repairing a coffee maker at a grocery store in the college town of Boulder was the first person killed. Nine more people died in a barrage of gunfire inside and outside the store in just over a minute in 2021 as the gunman targeted and chased people who were moving.
Survivors fled through the back of the store to escape the bullets, while others hid in shelves, cash registers and offices for more than an hour.
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, then 21, surrendered after being shot in the leg by a police officer inside the store, emerging from the store wearing only his underwear and repeatedly asking officers to call his mother. His lawyers do not deny he was the shooter.
But why he committed the mass shooting is still unknown. His trial begins this week.
The closest anyone has come to a possible motive was when a mental health expert testified at a hearing last year that Alissa had said he had purchased guns to carry out a mass shooting and wanted police to kill him.
Robert Olds, whose niece, 25-year-old Rikki Olds, was the manager who fatally shot Alissa at point-blank range near the entrance, plans to sit in his customary front-row seat during the trial. Though he sometimes wishes Alissa had simply been killed, he held out hope that he would one day discover why his niece, known for her sense of humor and outgoing personality, and the others were killed. He has become less hopeful about that, but is certain that Alissa knew what he was doing.
“I hope he goes to prison for the rest of his life, and then he will face the real punishment when he has to meet God and answer for the murder of 10 people,” he said.
The trial is expected to focus on Alissa’s mental state at the time of the shooting. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanityand his lawyers argue that he should be acquitted because his mental illness prevented him from distinguishing right from wrong.
The defense argued in a court filing that family members said he irrationally believed he was being followed by the FBI and that he spoke to himself as if to someone who wasn’t there. Prosecutors, however, point out that Alissa had never previously been treated for mental illness and was able to work up to 60 hours a week leading up to the shooting, something they say would not have been possible for someone with severe mental illness.
Alissa is charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder, 15 counts of attempted murder and other offenses, including possession of six high-capacity magazines, which are banned in Colorado after previous mass shootings.
Alissa’s trial has been postponed because experts repeatedly found he could not understand the proceedings and could not help his defense. But after Alissa improved after being forcibly medicated, Judge Ingrid Bakke ruled in October that he was mentally competent, allowing the proceedings to resume.
It’s up to the prosecutors to prove he was sane. They have to show that Alissa knew what he was doing and planned to kill people in the store.
The defense said authorities have not explained why Alissa bypassed a King Soopers store near his home in the Denver suburb of Arvada and drove about 15 miles (24 kilometers) to the chain’s store in Boulder, a city he had never visited before the shooting.
Prosecutors have presented evidence that Alissa had spent months before the shooting researching things like how to move and shoot an assault rifle and what types of bullets are most deadly. A court document said without further explanation that he was looking for information about the “Christ Church attacks,” an apparent reference to the live streamed shootings by a white nationalist about two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, where 51 people were killed in March 2019.
Alissa immigrated from Syria with his family as a toddler. He lived with his family in Arvada, where they owned a restaurant.
Alissa’s only known trouble before the shooting was a 2018 incident at high school when he was convicted of assaulting a fellow student, according to police documents. A former classmate also told The Associated Press that Alissa was kicked off the wrestling team after yelling that he would kill everyone following a loss in a practice match.
A sister-in-law who lived with Alissa told police that he had been playing with what she thought was a “machine gun” two days before the shooting before two family members took it away, court documents show.
Several of Alissa’s family members are being named as potential defense witnesses at the trial. Potential jurors will begin questioning Tuesday, with opening statements expected before the end of the week.
Both sides will rely on experts to testify about his mental health, including possibly videotaping their interviews with Alissa, said attorney Karen Steinhauser, a former prosecutor and law professor at the University of Denver.
If jurors do not find Alissa legally incompetent, they could also consider whether his mental illness prevented him from acting with intent and malice and instead find him guilty of second-degree murder, she said.
A mental health evaluation by experts at the state psychiatric hospital found that Alissa was legally sane at the time of the attack, according to details provided by the defense in a court filing this spring. The defense said the evaluators found that the attack would not have occurred if Alissa had not had untreated mental illnesses, which defense attorney Sam Dunn called schizophrenia with “auditory hallucinations.”
Olds said he’s bracing to hear more gruesome details about the shooting, including surveillance footage that has not previously been made public.
But he said the fact that the trial is finally over will help him and many of the families finally grieve what they lost.
“There is no such thing as moving on. It is a matter of finding other ways to live without your loved one,” he said.