BOULDER, Colo. (AP) – Law enforcement officers and former employees of a 21-year-old man accused of murdering 10 people in a Colorado grocery store have described the suspect as prone to sudden fury – revealing that he was banned from high school some years ago for a sudden attack on a classmate that left the student bloodied.
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, of the Denver suburb of Arvada, was in prison on Tuesday for murder a day after the attack on a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder and is scheduled to appear in court for the first time on Thursday.
He will be briefed at the hearing about the charges he is facing and about his rights as a defendant. Only later in the court proceedings would he be asked to file a plea.
Alissa bought a Ruger AR-556 pistol – which is technically a pistol, although it looks like an AR-15 rifle with a slightly shorter stock – on March 16, six days before the attack, according to an arrest affidavit. Investigators have not established a motive, Boulder County district attorney Michael Dougherty said.
Authorities have not disclosed where the gun was bought. An AR-15 style pistol was recovered at the supermarket and presumably used in the shooting, said a law enforcement officer who had been briefed on the shooting, who was not authorized to speak publicly, and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
A green tactical vest and a hand gun were also found in the supermarket after the suspect removed most of his clothing shortly before he was taken into custody.
Among the dead was Boulder police officer Eric Talley, 51, who arrived first after responding to a call about fired shots and someone with a gun, Police Chief Maris Herold said.
The law enforcement officer who had been briefed on the shooting said the suspect’s family had told investigators that Alissa was delusional and believed he was suffering from some sort of mental illness. The family members described moments when Alissa told them people were following or chasing him, which the official said may have contributed to the violence.
After the shooting, detectives went to Alissa’s home to find his sister-in-law, who told them that about two days earlier he had played with a weapon she thought looked like a “ machine gun, ” according to a sworn arrest.
No one opened the door on Tuesday at the Arvada house believed to be the property of the suspect’s father. The two-story house with a three-car garage is located in a relatively new middle and upper-class neighborhood.
While in high school in 2018, Alissa was found guilty of assaulting a fellow student in class after she knocked him to the floor, climbed on top of him and hit him on the head several times, according to a statement by the police.
Alissa “got up in class, walked over to the victim and kept him cold in the head,” the affidavit said.
Alissa complained that the student made fun of him and called him “ racial names ” weeks earlier, the affidavit said.
According to a police report from Arvada, the victim was bloody and vomiting after the attack. Alissa was expelled from school and sentenced to rehabilitation and community service.
One of his former high school wrestling teammates, Angel Hernandez, said Alissa got furious after losing a match in practice, voicing a flood of swear words, and yelling that he would kill everyone. Alissa’s coach kicked him out of the team because of the outburst, Hernandez said.
“He was one of those short-tempered guys,” Hernandez said. Once he gets angry it’s like something is taking over and he’s not. At that moment he can no longer be stopped. ”
Hernandez said that Alissa sometimes acted strangely, turned suddenly or looked over his shoulder.
‘He would say,’ Did you see that? Did you see that? Hernandez recalled. ‘We wouldn’t see anything. We always thought he was making fun of us. “
Arvada police were investigating but dropped a separate mischief complaint about Alissa in 2018, Detective David Snelling said. Alissa was also named for speeding in February.
After Dark Tuesday, about 100 people mourned at an improvised memorial set up for the dead in the nearby supermarket – decorated with wreaths, candles, banners that read “#Boulderstrong” and 10 crosses with blue hearts and the names of the victims.
Four girls huddled in the cold, one cried as she reminisced about how they protested the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Others recalled the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and the 2012 Aurora Cinema massacre.
Homer Talley, 74, described his son Eric as a devoted father who “knew the Lord.” He had seven children, ages 7 to 20.
The other dead were identified as Denny Stong, 20; Cousins Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jodi Waters, 65.
Leiker, Olds and Stong worked in the supermarket, said former employee Jordan Sailas.
Kim Cordova, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, which represents more than 30 store associates, said employees were doing their best to get customers to safety.
“They grabbed everyone they could and they took them to the back room or to other parts of the store to hide or took them out through the back dock,” said Cordova. “And these poor grocers have just gone through hell working through COVID in general all this last year of the pandemic.”
Monday’s attack was the seventh mass murder this year in the US, following the March 16 shooting that killed eight people at three massage companies in Atlanta, according to a database compiled by the AP, USA Today and Northeastern University.
It follows a pause in mass murders during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, which had the smallest number of such attacks in eight years, according to the database, which tracks mass murders defined as four or more deaths, not counting the shooter.
In Washington, President Joe Biden appealed to Congress to tighten the country’s gun laws. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer promised to bring forward two bills passed by the House to require extensive background checks for gun buyers. Biden supports the measures, but they face a more difficult path to passage in a narrowly divided Senate with a small democratic majority.
Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo in Washington, Jim Anderson in Denver, and AP employees from across the US contributed to this report. Nieberg is a corps member of the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national nonprofit service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on hidden issues.