By COLLEEN SLEVIN
BOULDER, Colo. — A mentally ill man who killed 10 people at a Colorado supermarket in 2021 was convicted Monday of murder and faces life in prison.
Defense attorneys did not dispute that Ahmad Alissa, who has schizophrenia, fatally shot 10 people including a police officer in the college town of Boulder. But he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, with the defense arguing he couldn’t tell right from wrong at the time of the attack.
In addition to 10 counts of first-degree murder, the jury found Alissa guilty on 38 charges of attempted murder, one count of assault, and six counts of possessing illegal, large-capacity magazines.
Alissa did not visibly react as the judge began reciting the guilty verdicts against him. He sat at a table with his attorneys and appeared to trade notes with members of the defense team, speaking quietly at times with one of his attorneys.
In this image taken from video provided by the Colorado Judicial Branch, Ahmad Alissa, third from left, stands for the verdict in his trial for the 2021 Colorado supermarket shootings, Monday, Sept 23, 2024, in Boulder, Colo. (Colorado Judicial Branch via AP)
Judge Ingrid Bakke had warned against any outbursts. There were some tears and restrained crying on the victims’ side of the courtroom as the murder convictions were read.
The courtroom was packed largely with victims’ families and police officers, including those who were shot at by Alissa. Several members of Alissa’s family sat just behind him.
Alissa started shooting immediately after getting out of his car in a King Soopers store parking lot in March 2021. He killed most of the victims in just over a minute and surrendered after an officer shot him in the leg.
Prosecutors had to prove Alissa was sane. They argued he didn’t fire randomly and showed an ability to make decisions by pursuing people who were running and trying to hide from him. He twice passed by a 91-year-old man who continued to shop, unaware of the shooting.
He came armed with steel-piercing bullets and illegal magazines that can hold 30 rounds of ammunition, which prosecutors said showed he took deliberate steps to make the attack as deadly as possible.
Several members of Alissa’s family, who immigrated to the United States from Syria, testified that he had become withdrawn and spoke less a few years before the shooting. He later began acting paranoid and showed signs of hearing voices, they said, and his condition worsened after he got COVID-19 in late 2020.
Alissa was diagnosed with schizophrenia after the attack and experts said the behaviors described by relatives are consistent with the onset of the disease.
State forensic psychologists who evaluated Alissa concluded he was sane during the shooting. The defense did not have to provide any evidence in the case and did not present any experts to say that Alissa was insane.
Despite the fact that he heard voices, the state psychologists said, Alissa did not experience delusions. They said his fear that he could be jailed or killed by police revealed Alissa knew his actions were wrong.
Alissa repeatedly told the psychologists that he heard voices, including “killing voices” right before the shooting. But Alissa failed during about six hours of interviews to provide more details about the voices or whether they were saying anything specific, forensic psychologist B. Thomas Gray testified.
The defense pointed out that Gray and and his partner, Loandra Torres, did not have full confidence in their sanity finding, largely because Alissa did not provide more information about his experiences even though that could have helped his case. Gray and Torres also said the voices played a role in the attack and they didn’t believe it would have happened if Alissa were not mentally ill.
Mental illness is not the same thing as insanity. Colorado law defines insanity as having a mental disease so severe that it’s impossible for a person to tell right from wrong.
Family members of the victims attended the two-week trial and watched graphic surveillance and police body camera video. Survivors testified about how they fled and in some cases helped others to safety.
Prosecutors did not offer any motive for the shooting. Alissa initially searched online for public places to attack in Boulder, including bars and restaurants, then a day before the shooting focused his research on large stores.
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On the day of the attack, he drove from his home in the Denver suburb of Arvada and pulled into the first supermarket in Boulder that he encountered. He shot three victims in the parking lot before entering the store.
An emergency room doctor said she crawled onto a shelf and hid among bags of potato chips. A pharmacist who took cover testified that she heard Alissa say “This is fun” at least three times as he went through the store firing his semi-automatic pistol that resembled an AR-15 rifle.
Alissa’s mother told the court that she thought her son was “sick.” His father testified that he thought Alissa was possessed by a djin, or evil spirit, but did not seek any treatment for his son because it would have been shameful for the family.