Deliberations begin in Colorado grocery store massacre trial

Crime

September 20, 2024

by Andi Babineau - CNN

Boulder, Colorado (CNN) — The fate of a gunman now rests in the hands of a 12-person jury, who are tasked with determining not if he committed the heinous act, but whether he was legally insane when he drove to a Boulder, Colorado grocery store and opened fire, killing 10 people on March 22, 2021.

Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 25, is facing 93 total charges for the massacre, including first degree murder, attempted murder, and assault. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Alissa’s mental state is the central issue in this case, as his attorneys don’t deny that he committed the shooting at a King Sooper’s store. In order to determine whether he was legally insane at the time of the shooting, jurors will need to weigh whether they believe he was able to form intent, or distinguish right from wrong.

Over the last few weeks, jurors have heard 10 days of testimony, during which the prosecution argued that despite being diagnosed with schizophrenia after the shooting, Alissa was sane when he carried out the attack.

“The evidence in this case is straightforward. What happened on March 22 of 2021 is not a mystery, it was on video,” Assistant District Attorney Ken Kupfner said in his closing argument, before ticking through every felony count Alissa is facing and pointing to the actions that prosecutors say prove beyond a reasonable doubt he acted “after deliberation, and with intent.”

Alissa is “not somebody who is insane… Somebody who thinks a mass shooting is fun, they’re sick. We agree he’s mentally ill. He has schizophrenia, but he’s not insane,” Kupfner said.

Alissa’s defense attorney Kathryn Herold told the jury in her closing argument that “this tragedy was borne out of disease, not choice.”

“Mr. Alissa committed these crimes because he was psychotic and delusional on March 22 of 2021,” Herold said. “We also know that but for the psychosis he was suffering, this tragedy would never have happened.”

She said prosecutors showed them the surveillance video of the incident, paraded witnesses on the stand, and brought Alissa’s possessions into the courtroom as evidence in order to “scare you” and “invoke your emotion.”

“When you remove that emotion, it’s clear that insanity is the only explanation for this tragedy,” she said.

Key testimony

Prosecutors spent seven days making their case, painting the attack as having been carefully orchestrated.

They laid out a timeline showing Alissa allegedly began purchasing guns, ammunition, tactical gear, and firearm accessories in January 2021, more than two months before the shooting. A digital forensic examiner, Stephanie Sears, testified she found nearly 6,000 related images and web searches of prior mass shootings on Alissa’s phone, including the El Paso Walmart shooting, the Christchurch mosque shootings, and an attack in Muscogee, Oklahoma.

Sears testified she also found searches related to modifying semiautomatic weapon triggers, which bullets are the most deadly, and whether 30 round magazines are legal in Colorado.

A note found on Alissa’s phone started off describing Brazilian jiu-jitsu moves, and evolved to describing tactical movements and how to shoot while moving, with notes including “engage, move, stop, engage,” and “bring optics to eye not opposite.”

Survivors recount chilling details

Dr. Alison Sheets, a retired emergency physician, described stopping at the King Soopers that afternoon to pick up groceries after spending the day cross country skiing. She told the court she heard “loud noises” and ducked behind a small cardboard display, and upon realizing she was hearing gunshots, she slid sideways onto the bottom shelf of a potato chip display.

Sheets said she saw the shooter walking past the aisle where she was hiding.

“He was hunting,” she testified, “He was looking down the aisle as he walked by.”

Sheets also described the moments after hearing the shots that ultimately killed Suzanne Fountain, the ninth victim, one aisle over from where she was hiding.

“I, uh, heard someone die,” she said. “Just a little breath of exhalation of someone collapsing and dying, and I smelled blood after that.”

A pharmacist filling in at the store that day testified to hearing the gunman moving through the store.

Sarah Chen said she ducked behind the front pharmacy counter and “heard a lot of gunshots,” followed by metal clanging, which she attributed to carts being pushed together.

She said she heard yelling and when she listened more closely, she realized it was the shooter yelling, “This is fun, this is fun!” at least three times.

Chen said she moved to the back of the pharmacy knowing she’d be better able to move around, able to see the shooter’s movements down nearby aisles, and remembering a bench that could be used as a weapon, if necessary.

“We were entertainment,” she told the court. “I didn’t want to die not having done anything.”

First responders describe chaos

Several responding officers described the chaos of the initial response - dispatchers were getting reports that there were between one to three shooters, and that at least one shooter may have fled the scene.

Boulder Police Officer Bryan Plyter testified that when he heard the first responding officer over the radio, her tone of voice “sent chills up my spine.”

“I could tell by the radio traffic that this was not a fake call… I was headed towards an actual active shooter,” he said.

Other responding officers also testified to entering the store with inadequate equipment to face a shooter who was reported to be using a semi-automatic weapon.

Plyter said most of the shields in use by the Boulder Police Department at the time would be ineffective at stopping the more powerful rifle rounds. He said he was carrying such a shield when he charged into the store.

Some officers said they went in with only handguns, and without ballistic vests or helmets.

“I had made a decision that I was probably going to lose my life going into this store. I thought about my child, that I may never see him again,” Plyter told the court.

‘A bit like talking to a Vulcan’

Dr. Loandra Torres, one of the criminal psychologists who evaluated Alissa during his time at the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo, described Alissa as displaying “negative” symptoms of schizophrenia, or the lack of neurotypical mental and behavioral function. She said he was withdrawn, didn’t show emotion, wouldn’t converse or would give vague answers to questions, and showed signs he was hearing voices.

Torres’ colleague, Dr. Thomas Gray, likened negative symptoms of schizophrenia as being “sometimes a bit like talking to a Vulcan.”

Despite recognizing those symptoms, Torres and Gray opined that Alissa “was not insane at the time of the offense,” because she said they found no evidence to indicate he was unable to distinguish right from wrong or form intent.

“A mental disease or defect alone is not sufficient to find someone insane,” Torres testified.

Defense attorneys presented their case as Alissa having slowly devolved into insanity because of his undiagnosed, unmedicated schizophrenia.

While cross examining Torres, defense counsel SamDunn questioned whether she believed Alissa was in the throes of a psychotic episode during the shooting, and Torres said that she did.

“We do think that the voices played some sort of role in terms of this event, and as such, we do think that but for the mental illness, this likely would not have happened,” Torres testified.

Suicide smock

The defense team also called several doctors involved with Alissa’s treatment to the stand, including one they hired in the days following the shooting to evaluate his mental state.

Dr. Joshua Hatfield is a forensic psychologist who met with Alissa several times between March and August of 2021, before Alissa was receiving treatment for schizophrenia. He said his initial impression of Alissa is “someone who’s remarkably psychotic, remarkably ill.”

Hatfield recounted Alissa was wearing a “suicide smock” during their first meeting, which is a layer of clothing used for safety purposes when there is concern an inmate may try to harm themself.

“There’s no clothing underneath his smock, he was completely exposed and didn’t seem to have any sort of worries or understanding that he was essentially sitting there naked and exposed for whoever was kind of walking around,” Hatfield said.

Hatfield also described him as having poor hygiene, which other expert witnesses and Alissa’s own family also testified.

Family explains childhood

The defense called six members of Alissa’s immediate family to the stand, including both of his parents, two brothers, and two sisters. The family emigrated from Syria when Alissa was a young child. Alissa and several of his siblings were sent back to Syria to live from 2008 to 2010, to learn the country’s language and culture. Alissa returned to the U.S. to attend high school.

They all spoke of Alissa being a kind, smart child but becoming more withdrawn during high school. Each of them said he began talking to himself, smiling and laughing for no reason, and exhibiting signs of paranoia. They said he would sit alone smoking hookah and wouldn’t engage with the rest of the family unless he was specifically addressed.

The family described the physical changes they saw in Alissa that coincided with their assumed onset of his schizophrenia. They said he gained weight, started losing his hair, and stopped showering regularly.

They spoke of his forgetfulness at work at one of several restaurants owned by the family. Alissa was a cook and they said he would often need supervision to make sure he prepared the correct meals and didn’t burn the food.

His mother, Khadija Alhidid, was the first family member to testify. Using an English language interpreter she recounted an incident, echoed later by the rest of the family, in which Alissa broke a car key fob because he believed it was being used to track him.

She also testified her son taped over the camera on his phone because he believed he was being spied on.

Alissa’s father, Moustafa Alissa, also through an interpreter, told the court he never sought help for his son’s increasingly strange behavior because he was worried about how it would appear to the Syrian community. He said it would be shameful to admit his son is crazy. Moustafa Alissa also testified that he thought his son might be possessed by jinn, which in Islamic culture are spirits that can be harmful to humans.

On his cross examinations, District Attorney MichaelDougherty questioned Alissa’s parents about an incident with a gun at their home less than a week before the shooting. A bullet had jammed inside a Ruger AR-556 pistol, which would later be used in the shooting, and Alissa was banging the gun against the floor to try to dislodge it. Alhidid said one of her other sons helped Alissa unjam the weapon and that he was supposed to return it the following day.

On the morning of the shooting, Alissa’s mother said she made breakfast and offered to give her son $20 to go to the barber for a haircut and shave. She and her husband left the house to run errands, and that was the last time she saw Alissa before walking into court to testify.