Trial of gunman in 2021 grocery store mass killing in Colorado goes to the jury

BOULDER, Colo. – The mass killing of 10 people at a King Soopers supermarket here in 2021 was carried out by a man whose mental illness neither qualified as insanity nor prevented him from carefully planning an attack he knew was wrong, prosecutors told a jury on Friday.

During closing arguments in the trial of Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, Boulder County prosecutor Ken Kupfner described deliberate, even cruel, choices the defendant made before and during the attack: researching the “most deadly” bullets, purchasing a Ruger AR-556 pistol that was easier to maneuver than another firearm he owned, hiding from police before killing one of them with a shot to the head.

“We agree he’s mentally ill. He has schizophrenia,” Kupfner said. “But he is not insane.”

Kathryn Herold, a public defender for Alissa, countered that he was tormented by voices he heard in his head, which he believed would stop once he carried out the massacre. He should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, she told jurors.

“You’re not saying he’s getting away with it. What you are saying is that his mental illness, his schizophrenia, prevented him from knowing right from wrong,” she said. “It’s clear that insanity is the only explanation for this tragedy.”

Jurors began deliberating on Friday afternoon following two weeks of testimony. Alissa, who is from the Denver suburb of Arvada, is charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and dozens of other charges in connection with the March 22, 2021, shooting rampage inside the supermarket in Boulder, a place many locals considered “a hub for the community.”

Ten people died within minutes – on the pavement in front, at the main entrance, inside. The victims, who ranged in age from 20 to 65, included three store employees, six customers and the first police officer to arrive on the scene that cold, gray afternoon. The tragedy in Boulder followed by just six days a mass shooting in the Atlanta area that left eight women dead.

Alissa, who was 21 at the time, was arrested there after being shot in the leg. The jury’s verdict will determine whether he spends the rest of his life in prison or is confined indefinitely to a state mental institution.

He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, leading to a trial specifically on his state of mind at the time of the mass killing rather than whether he was the gunman. On Friday, Herold described a young man who had become increasingly withdrawn and paranoid but whose mental health problems went untreated.

Alissa was diagnosed with schizophrenia after his arrest, but prosecutors emphasized that no expert who evaluated him determined that he was not sane at the time of the shooting.

After his arrest, he said in interviews that he had been hearing “consistent voices,” ones Herold repeatedly called “killing voices.” She screamed “Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!” in the courtroom on Friday, urging the jury to imagine how they would have experienced that in their own heads.

The prosecution, which argues that the killings were premeditated, rested its case on Monday after more than a week of eyewitness and forensic testimony. One man who had seen Alissa enter the store recalled what happened once he began shooting.

“Just chaos,” Hayden Steele said. “People screaming, running, gunshots, people mobbing toward the back exits to get away.”

On Friday, Kupfner walked jurors through Alissa’s actions leading up to that moment: He researched and purchased ammunition and a 30-round magazine, which is illegal in Colorado.

He held down a job at the family eatery while scouting possible locations for his crime on his phone, including not only the King Soopers, but bars, restaurants, Target, Safeway, Petco and a clothing consignment store.

Once at King Soopers, he sat in his car for several minutes, which Kupfner called an “opportunity for reflection and judgment.”

“This wasn’t a hasty act,” said Kupfner, the county’s first assistant district attorney. “This is something that had been planned and prepared for at least three months.”

During the massacre, prosecutors told the jury, Alissa did not shoot at random but instead fired multiple bullets into victims to ensure they were dead. Upon being detained by police, he stripped to his underwear – which he later said was to avoid being shot – and complied with authorities’ instructions. Kupfner called that evidence Alissa knew what he did was wrong and was capable of following directions.

Herold asserted that Alissa’s preparations and actions during the killing spree were random and pointed to his insanity. He did not live near the Boulder King Soopers and had never been there, she noted. He spared the lives of some shoppers for no clear reason. He was researching Kanye West’s net worth while also planning the violence.

Prosecutors had “revictimized” witnesses by having them testify, she said, and by repeatedly showing gruesome video of the mass shooting solely to sway the jury’s emotions.

“What is the point of that, except to try to invoke your sympathies so you say he’s guilty?” Herold said. “To dissuade you from the real evidence of how sick he was.”

Alissa did not testify. But the defense called both of his parents to talk about their son, who was born in Syria and came as a child to the United States with his family. “He is sick,” his mother, Khadija Alhidid, said through an interpreter after being asked if she thought her son “knew right from wrong” at the time of the shooting. “No sane person will do anything like that.”

Yet his parents never sought mental health treatment for him, with his father acknowledging Tuesday that they worried about their community’s reaction if word got out. “It’s shameful in our culture, if we say that our son is crazy,” Moustafa Alissa testified.