On a now-disabled Facebook page, Alissa said she moved to the United States in 2002, years before a violent civil war turned millions of Syrians into refugees. The Syrian cities that some in their family call their hometowns – Aleppo and Raqqa – have become bombarded battlegrounds and a haven for Islamic State while Alissa and her brothers were growing and opening businesses in the United States.
The Alissas were part of a small Syrian diaspora in Colorado. Arab Americans represent less than 1% of the state’s population, and the majority of those who identify themselves as “Arabs” in the census polls say they are from Iraq, Somalia or Sudan. Only 324 Syrian refugees have been resettled in Colorado in the past 40 years years, according to data from the Colorado Department of Human Services.
Public records identify Alissa’s father as Moustafa Alissa, 62, and social media profiles and interviews indicate that Ahmad was one of at least seven siblings. Several of his older brothers found a foothold in the restaurant business, opening food trucks that later turned into restaurants.
Records show that, at various times, the Alissa brothers have also ventured into an auto service company and – at one point – rubbish removal. A brother-in-law, Usame Almusa, an immigrant newcomer from Syria, filed a corporate action to open yet another restaurant.
The family has moved at least three times in the past two decades, from the predominantly middle-class city of Aurora to an apartment in Denver and a rental in Arvada, where a former neighbor remembers relatives sometimes stopping to ask questions about suburban lawn and weeding tasks.
Mr. Alissa had barely started at Denver South High School when the family moved again, and he had to move to a school first, then to another, in the nearby town of Arvada. They moved into their current home, a seven-bedroom, 7,400 square-foot home in a quiet subdivision in 2017, according to public records, and paid $ 634,000. One of the older brothers, Ali, 34, is listed as its owner.