The suspect accused of opening fire inside an overcrowded Colorado supermarket was a 21-year-old man who allegedly bought an assault weapon less than a week earlier.
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa purchased the gun on March 16, six days before the attack at a King Soopers store in Boulder that killed 10 people, including a police officer, according to an arrest statement. It was not immediately known where the gun was purchased.
The shooting came 10 days after a judge blocked the city of Boulder’s 2018 ban on assault rifles. That decree and another ban on large-capacity magazines followed the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas College in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 people dead.
A lawsuit contesting the bans was swiftly launched, supported by the National Rifle Association. The judge overturned the decree under a Colorado law that prevents cities from making their own gun rules.
Alissa, who is from the Denver suburb of Arvada, was charged at the county jail on Tuesday on charges of murder after being treated at a hospital. He was due to make a first appearance in court Thursday.
Investigators have not established the reason for Monday’s attack, but believe Alissa was the only sniper, said Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty.
A law enforcement officer informed of the shooting said the suspect’s family told investigators that he believed Alissa was suffering from some form of mental illness, including delusions. Relatives described occasions when Alissa said there were people following or chasing him, which they said may have contributed to the violence, said the official, who preferred to remain anonymous.
The attack was the country’s deadliest mass shooting since a 2019 attack on a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where a sniper killed 22 people in an attack that police said targeted at Mexicans.
In Washington, President Joe Biden asked Congress to tighten up the country’s gun laws.
“Ten lives were lost and more families were destroyed by armed violence in the state of Colorado,” said Biden at the White House.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has promised to present two bills passed by the House to require more background checks for arms buyers. Biden supports the measures, but they face a tougher road to approval in a divided Senate with a narrow Democratic majority.
Supermarket officials told investigators that Alissa shot a man several times outside Boulder supermarket before entering, according to the statement. Another person was found shot in a vehicle next to a car registered to the suspect’s brother.
The shooting made buyers and employees struggle to protect themselves. SWAT officers carrying ballistic shields slowly approached the store while others escorted frightened people out of the building, which had some of its windows broken. Customers and employees fled across a rear loading dock to safety. Others took refuge in nearby stores.
Several calls to 911 paint a picture of a chaotic and terrifying scene, according to the statement.
A person who called said the suspect opened fire through the window of his vehicle. Others called to say they were hiding inside the store while the sniper was shooting at customers. Witnesses described the sniper as having an AR-15 black weapon and wearing jeans and perhaps body armor.
When he was in custody, Alissa had been hit by a bullet that went through her leg, the statement said. He had taken off most of his clothes and was dressed only in shorts. Inside the store, he had left the gun, a tactical vest, a semi-automatic weapon and his bloody clothes, the statement said.
After the shooting, the detectives went to Alissa’s house and found her sister-in-law, who told them that he had been playing with a gun that she thought looked like a “machine gun” about two days earlier, the document said.
No one answered the door to the Arvada home, which was believed to belong to the suspect’s father. The two-story home with a three-car garage is in a relatively new upper and middle class neighborhood.
Monday’s attack was the seventh mass murder this year in the United States and occurred just days after the shooting that left eight people dead at three massage companies in Georgia.