ARVADA, Colorado – Authorities on Tuesday identified the suspect in the killing of 10 people at a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, a 21-year-old with a history of violence whose brother said he was deeply upset.
Alissa, who is from Arvada, was charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder by the mass shooting. He was taken into custody after being shot during the detention.
Ali Aliwi Alissa, the suspect’s 34-year-old brother, told The Daily Beast that authorities searched his home all night after the shooting.
Alissa said her brother was “very antisocial” and paranoid, adding that, in high school, he would describe “being chased, someone is after him, someone is looking for him”.
“When he was having lunch with my sister at a restaurant, he said, ‘People are in the parking lot, they are looking for me.’ She left and there was no one. We didn’t know what was going on in his head, ”said Alissa, admitting that she believes her brother has mental problems.
Police said that when Alissa was arrested on Monday afternoon, he had a wound in his leg. Images from the scene showed him being pulled out of the store, shirtless and shoes off, and blood covering his leg. He was in stable condition and was arrested at Boulder County Prison on Tuesday afternoon.
The suspect’s brother Ali Aliwi Alissa said he traveled to another location in King Sooper after work on Monday to look for a third brother who had done a task and could not be found. He said he found that relative in police custody and that he and more relatives were also detained.
Alissa’s family home sits on the edge of a quiet cul-de-sac with two-story houses and a mix of Aspens, evergreens, basketball hoops and bird feeders. Several generations of the family call this home, with solar panels on the roof and a mast path that leads to the backyard, your home.
If the neighbors had not seen the news online, they discovered that something was wrong at around 9:30 pm on Monday, when a fleet of vehicles arrived and broke into the block. “It looked like the house was surrounded by Navy SEALs,” said a pilot and 39-year-old neighbor, who was in the next bed when the police arrived and refused to give his name.
Matt Benz, a 37-year-old investment manager who lives five doors down, woke up to a loudspeaker asking everyone in Alissa’s house to come to the front door. “It’s a quiet neighborhood, full of young families, that’s why we moved here,” he told The Daily Beast, detailing his shock at the news.
On Tuesday morning, a woman who identified herself as an older sister answered the door to the Alissa family home. She said she was shocked, and the family never suspected that her brother was capable of committing this act of violence. “We are shocked. He’s good, a quiet brother, ”the 30-year-old told The Daily Beast, refusing to give her name.
On a Facebook page now deleted, Alissa described herself as “born in Syria in 1999 came to the USA in 2002. I like wrestling and informational documentaries that is me”. He also said he was “interested in” computer engineering / computer science …. kickboxing “. Posts about mixed martial arts, especially jiu jitsu, dominated the page. Alissa sometimes posted about Islam, usually about prayers or holidays.
He shared photos of himself in his Arvada West High wrestling uniform, as well as wearing medals from a wrestling association.
Conrad, a former fighting companion of the suspect who spoke on the condition that his surname not be released, told The Daily Beast that he was deeply surprised by the accusations, but that Alissa had a strong temper.
“One thing I can say is that he didn’t take losses very well,” he said. “I remember that in wrestling. He would throw his helmet, he would not speak to the coaches when he lost. If I remember correctly, I even cursed one of the coaches once. “
In a Facebook post, the suspect appeared to express fears that someone was aiming at his phone for Islamophobic reasons.
“Yes, if these racist Islamophobic people stopped hacking my phone and let me have a normal life, I would probably do it,” he posted in July 2019.
On Facebook, his policy appeared mixed in several fields. He shared an article rebuking Donald Trump’s stance on immigration, but he also posted about his own opposition to gay marriage and abortion.
The day after the shooting at the Christchurch mosque in 2019 in New Zealand, Alissa shared a Facebook post by another user that said: “The Muslims at the #christchurch mosque were not the victims of a single sniper. They were victims of the entire Islamophobia industry that vilified them. “
The authorities did not disclose the reason behind the terrible killings, saying the investigation was still in its preliminary stages and “it is premature to draw any conclusions at this point”.
“I can say that the community is safe and that we will continue to share updates as we conduct our investigation and draw conclusions as a result of that investigation,” said FBI special agent Michael Schneider.
According to the suspect’s brother, the motivation may not have been political.
“[It was] it is by no means a political statement, it is a mental illness, ”Ali Aliwi Alissa told The Daily Beast. “The guy used to be bullied a lot in high school, he was like an outgoing boy, but after he went to high school and suffered a lot of bullying, he started to become antisocial.”
Court records show that Alissa had at least one previous disagreement with the law, including an arrest after “cold-killing” a classmate in 2017. According to court documents obtained by KDVR, Alissa punched a colleague in the head afterwards that he “made fun of him and called him racial names weeks before.” The victim suffered bruising, swelling and cuts to the head. Alissa pleaded guilty to a charge of assault over the incident in 2018.
An employee at Arvada West High School told The Daily Beast that Alissa was transferred to the school in the middle of her first year and graduated in 2018.
The brother said that the family has been in Colorado for almost 20 years and that he “is sorry” for the victims.
The Boulder Police Department also released the names of the ten people killed on Monday, aged 65 to 20.
They include Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowika, 49; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; Boulder Police Officer Eric Talley, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; Jody Waters, 65.
“I wish I could stay here and promise that the pain will heal quickly,” Colorado Governor Jared Polis told a news conference on Tuesday. “But it won’t … At times like this, it’s hard to see the light that shines through the darkness.”
“Not only have we lost ten lives, this is true horror and terror,” he added.
Lori Olds, Ricki Olds’ aunt, wrote on Facebook on Tuesday: “We lost our beloved Rikki Olds to the monster who shot the real pacifiers in Boulder CO yesterday that his rotten ass will fry and burn in hell.”
Reports of a store shooting on Table Mesa Drive arrived shortly before 3 pm local time on Monday, officials said. Several witnesses described scenes of terror inside the supermarket, while customers and workers rushed to protect themselves after hearing a series of loud bangs or watching the attacker shoot people.
Sarah Moonshadow, a 42-year-old resident of southern Boulder, was buying strawberries with her 21-year-old son when the shooting started.
“He shot us well. I didn’t look. I just ran, ”she told the Daily Beast on Monday.
Another witness said The Denver Post the sniper “didn’t say anything” before he started shooting. “He just went in and started shooting,” said the witness. After the sniper “fired a few shots,” he “went silent, and then fired a few more. He wasn’t spraying, ”said a third witness.
The events in Boulder marked the second major mass shootout in a week, occurring just days after a sniper shot three massage parlors in the Atlanta metropolitan area, killing eight people, six of them Asian women.
Colorado was also the scene of some of the country’s worst mass shootings after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, which left 13 dead. In 2012, an attack on an Aurora cinema left 12 dead.