Gunman who killed 10 people in Colorado supermarket in 2021 convicted of murder

DENVER – A Colorado jury on Monday rejected and convicted a man diagnosed with the severe mental disorder schizophrenia of first-degree murder in the shooting at a grocery store in the city of Boulder in 2021, a mass shooting that left 10 people, including a police officer, dead.

Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 25, had pleaded not guilty on the grounds of insanity. Instead, the jury found the Syrian-born man guilty of 10 counts of first-degree murder in Boulder District Court. The jury also found him guilty of dozens of attempted murder and weapons offenses.

In Colorado, a conviction for premeditated murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“Today justice was done,” Colorado Governor Jared Polis said in a statement.

That Alissa committed the shooting spree was never in dispute. The case focused on his mental state at the time of the shooting. Under Colorado law, a person must be deemed incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong for an insanity defense to succeed.

According to authorities, Alissa was armed with a legally purchased Ruger AR-556 pistol when he entered the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, about 30 miles northwest of Denver, on March 22, 2021.

Alissa shot two people in the parking lot before entering the store and killing eight others, including a police officer who responded to the shooting.

“He is methodical and brutal,” District Attorney Michael Dougherty told jurors in his closing argument.

The psychologists and psychiatrists who testified during the trial agreed that Alissa was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a serious mental illness. But that diagnosis alone does not make a person legally incompetent.

“This tragedy is the result of an illness and not a conscious decision,” defense attorney Kathryn Herold told the jury.