Testimony begins in Colorado grocery store shooting trial

More than three difficult years later, the people who witnessed the mass murder at a King Soopers grocery store in Colorado are on 22 March 2021carefully recalled the events in a Boulder courtroom on Thursday. Seven people took the stand, the first to testify in the trial of Ahmad Alissa for the killing of 10 people.

Prosecutor Michael Dougherty tried to show that Ahmad Alisa The mission was clear that day, and the actions were planned, deliberate and conscious. Defense attorney Sam Dunn hopes the jury will find Ahmad Alissa not guilty by reason of insanity.

“This guy didn't just move around and shoot randomly, he aimed and aimed,” said Kevin Slay, one of the prosecution's first witnesses.

Among the most disturbing stories was that of Dr. Allison Sheets, a former emergency room physician who has since retired since the incident. When she heard loud noises, she first hid behind a cardboard cutout and then slithered into a shelf behind bags of potato chips, where the yellow color may have camouflaged the yellow of the ski jacket she was wearing from a day of cross-country skiing with her partner.

“I just crouched in there as quietly and quickly as I could. Seconds after I hid, I looked up and saw the shooter walking past the hallway I was in,” Sheets said.

“What was he doing as he passed by?” Dougherty asked.

“He was hunting. As he passed by, he looked down a hallway,” she said.

She heard a woman being shot in the next aisle and dying quickly. She recognized the sounds of the almost immediate exhalation of a person she recognized from her days as a doctor. A man crawled up the aisle where she was hiding, seeking shelter of his own, and also tried to climb into the potato chip aisle. She feared they would both be found.

“I caught his eye, and I don't know how I gestured, but I didn't want him to keep pulling out potato chips because I thought that would make it clear that someone had been there. And then when I caught his eye, he stopped what he was doing and started walking south behind me.”

He found a place between other potato chip bags and the two survived hidden there until the police pulled them out.

Among the stories was one about the apparently selfless heroic act of Starbucks employee Logan Smith. First, he called 911, spoke calmly and gave an address. But then a recording played in court addressed the shooting.

“I can give the speech, and that's all I can say before the shooter fired in my direction, causing Rikki Olds to collapse to the ground,” he said.

Colleague Rikki Olds was among the 10 dead. Smith had a colleague named Helen.

“She was rooted to the spot and I knew I wasn't going to leave. I wasn't going to leave her. I wasn't going to run out of the store. I stayed with her the whole time and we hid behind the trash cans.” There they hid in the Starbucks kiosk. He looked at his watch and noted the time. 52 minutes later, a police dog was in front of him. They were safe.

The testimony will continue on Friday.