Boulder King Soopers shooting trial begins with focus on mental state

A man holds a rifle over a cowering woman at a supermarket checkout. Three police officers duck as bullets explode glass over their heads. A mentally disabled man stares in confusion at a bloody body.

On Thursday, prosecutors showed jurors image after image of the mass shooting at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder as they made their opening statements in the long-delayed jury trial of Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 25, who is accused of killing 10 people in the March 22, 2021, attack.

Alissa's lawyers do not deny that he carried out the mass shooting. But Alissa has pleaded not guilty on the grounds of insanity. He claims he cannot be held responsible for the murders because he was either so mentally ill at the time of the murders that he could not distinguish between right and wrong, or so mentally ill that he could not form the criminal intent to carry out the massacre.

Alissa was diagnosed with schizophrenia and began experiencing symptoms in his late teens, including hearing voices, visual hallucinations and feelings of paranoia, defense attorney Samuel Dunn said. Alissa frequently heard screaming and yelling voices in his head and believed he was being followed by the FBI, Dunn told jurors.

“Prior to the crime and on the day of the shooting, Mr. Alissa was in the midst of a psychotic episode,” Dunn said.

“He has his sights set on Boulder”

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty told jurors that Alissa was of sound mind during the mass shooting, pointing to Alissa's months of planning and preparation, the lethality of the attack and Alissa's position with authorities as evidence of his mental capacity.

Alissa, who lived in Arvada, began researching mass shootings in January 2021, Dougherty said. Between January and March, he looked at more than 6,000 images of guns, ammunition and equipment on his phone, including 400 photos of bomb-making materials.

On Jan. 20, 2021, he visited a website with a URL that said, in part, “What type of bullets are most deadly?” Alissa then purchased the type of bullets highlighted on the page, Dougherty said, and used them in the murders.

During the same period, Alissa also researched other mass shootings, focusing on Boulder, Dougherty said.

“We know he's targeting Boulder,” he said.

Alissa is charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder resulting in the deaths of customers, employees and a King Soopers police officer, as well as a Boulder police officer, and faces dozens of other charges related to the attack.

Killed in the shooting: Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Teri Leiker, 51; Boulder police Officer Eric Talley, 51; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jody Waters, 65.

On Thursday, Alissa sat in court with his defense attorneys, constantly shifting in his chair and looking around the courtroom. Dunn argued to the jury that Alissa's untreated schizophrenia left him unable to distinguish between right and wrong when he carried out the attack.

“He thought people were following him, thought people were watching him,” he said. “He was suffering from delusions.”

Dunn told a story in which Alissa's father found him sitting on a couch in the family's Arvada home in the middle of the night. Alissa believed there was a man in the bathroom, Dunn said, but Alissa's father couldn't find anyone there.

“Ahmad Alissa was insane,” Dunn said. “…The cause was his own insanity. …He could not cognitively distinguish between right and wrong.”

“I heard someone die”

Several witnesses described the mass shooting as testimony began Thursday afternoon, including Alison Sheets, a now-retired emergency room doctor. She had stopped at the store to get supplies after skiing and was wearing a bright yellow jacket. When the shooting started, she was lying on her stomach, hiding on a lower shelf among bags of potato chips.

“Fortunately, many of the potato chips are yellow,” she said. “Seconds after I hid, I looked up and saw the shooter walking past the aisle I was in. After that, I looked away pretty quickly. I definitely didn't want to be seen.”

Sheets said within a minute she heard a person being shot in the hallway next to her.

“I heard someone die – just the quiet exhalation of someone collapsing and dying, and then I smelled blood,” she testified.

Alissa shot eight people in 68 seconds, Dougherty said.

“The victims are completely random, but the murders were absolutely planned, deliberate and premeditated,” Dougherty told jurors, citing Alissa's lethality as proof of his intent: Nine of the 10 victims were shot multiple times. None of those shot survived.

“When he hit the person, he would go ahead and execute them by shooting them over and over again,” Dougherty said. “Everyone who was hit, he would finish them off.”