There still are few details about why a 21-year-old from Arvada is suspected of buying a gun, donning a tactical vest, driving to a different town and ending the lives of 10 apparent strangers at a Boulder grocery store.
But the loss and grief felt immediately in Colorado and across the nation after another mass shooting isn’t dependent on the gunman’s motive.
Once again, Colorado grappled Tuesday with the aftermath of a mass shooting that ended the lives of people who were going about their daily business. Phones rang across the state late into the night as law enforcement searched until 4 a.m. Tuesday for family members of the victims.
“The families have been notified, everybody quietly hoping that it wasn’t your friend or your co-worker or your family member,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said at a morning news briefing in Boulder, adding later: “This loss is especially painful for the friends and family members of those left behind, and as governor, I offer my condolences to all those who suffer loss, but this is a loss for all of us, and we mourn those who fell as a state, and we mourn them as a nation.”
The suspected gunman, who investigators say purchased one of his weapons six days before the shooting, surrendered to police after being shot in the leg. He did not answer many questions asked by arresting officers, and is expected to face 10 counts of first-degree murder as the county’s top prosecutor promised the suspect “will be held fully responsible.”
The dead, publicly identified Tuesday morning, include a Boulder police officer, father to seven, who arrived first at the King Soopers in south Boulder and rushed into danger. A shy 23-year-old — son of Serbian refugees who came to the U.S. to start a new life — died alone in his car after being shot. Three store employees died in their workplace after months of working through a deadly pandemic. A newly-engaged Boulder business owner and a soon-to-be grandfather, both dead. Retirees, an artist, a model plane enthusiast — gone.
The nation lowered its flags Tuesday for the victims of the Boulder mass killing — just hours after they had been raised again following a man’s deadly shooting rampage that killed eight people in the Atlanta area. President Joe Biden in a speech offered condolences to the Boulder victims’ families and said he’s been through too many similar shootings.
“I hate to say it, because we say it so often: My heart goes out, our hearts go out to the survivors who had to flee for their lives and who hid, terrified, unsure if they’d ever see their families again, their friends again,” Biden said.
Mourners from across the Denver area came to the King Soopers, still encircled by a chain-link fence. They twined flowers into the fence and attached heartfelt notes. Others quietly bore witness, standing in intermittent snow with hands clasped in prayer, fingers cupped around a candle or arms wrapped around one another to contain heaving sobs.
“Our community is hurting, so I’m hurting,” said Jessica Fisher, 40, who left flowers at her shuttered neighborhood grocery store. “We’re angry. We’re scared.”
An ongoing investigation
Boulder police Chief Maris Herold on Tuesday identified the suspect as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa. Authorities said there is an extensive investigation into his background and that he has lived in the U.S. for most of his life.
Police responded at 2:40 p.m. Monday to the King Soopers at 3600 Table Mesa Drive after reports of an active shooter. Witnesses told police that the suspect shot out the window in a vehicle, that he chased a man toward a nearby street and that he fired multiple shots inside the grocery store, according to an arrest affidavit released Tuesday.
King Soopers employees at the scene told police they saw the suspect shoot a man in the parking lot, then stand over the fallen man and shoot him several more times, the affidavit states.
Officers entered the building within minutes and exchanged gunfire with the suspect, shooting him in the leg, police said. The first officer on scene, Eric Talley, died in the store.
Alissa surrendered after more officers entered the store while carrying body shields, about 50 minutes after the initial 911 calls, according to the affidavit. He had taken off most of his clothes, laid down his guns and walked backwards toward the officers, the affidavit states.
Alissa did not answer many of the arresting officers’ questions, but asked for his mother, according to the affidavit. The arresting officers did not believe Alissa was impaired by drugs or alcohol and took him to a hospital for treatment of his wound.
He was booked into the Boulder County Jail at 10:49 a.m. Tuesday after being discharged from the hospital and is scheduled to make a first court appearance Thursday morning.
Law enforcement and crime scene analysts investigated the scene for hours after the shooting — the last victim’s body wasn’t removed from the scene until 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Officers found a handgun and a rifle next to Alissa’s bloody clothes and tactical vest inside the store. Police learned that the suspect purchased a Ruger AR-556 pistol on March 16 — six days before the shooting. The Ruger guns are equipped to function similarly to a rifle and have barrels up to 10.5 inches long.
Fifteen miles from the grocery store, FBI agents arrived about 9:30 p.m. Monday at Alissa’s home in a quiet Arvada neighborhood of single-family homes.
“We could hear them on a loudspeaker, ‘Please come to the door, this is the FBI,’” neighbor Matt Benz said.
The agents then brought several people out of the home and interviewed them on the street corner, Benz said.
Alissa has a minor criminal history in Colorado, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and court records, including a 2018 conviction for misdemeanor assault.
Arvada police Detective Dave Snelling would not say whether local police had received any warnings or complaints about Alissa recently, however, and instead deferred the question to the FBI.
“You don’t know what can happen anymore”
The compounding trauma gun violence has inflicted on Colorado was present at the impromptu memorial that slowly grew outside the King Soopers store Tuesday while investigators did their work inside a barrier of fencing and police tape.
Ryan Evans, 41, drove from Lakewood to leave flowers. He was a student at the University of Colorado Boulder when the Columbine High School shooting happened in 1999. As a member of the university’s ROTC program, he served a pallbearer for Columbine victim Kyle Velasquez.
Evans called the Table Mesa area his “happy place,” which he visits frequently to hike. He brought his children up just a few weeks ago.
“That,” he said of the King Soopers shooting, ”will not dictate what this place and this community means to me.”
Boulder Mayor Sam Weaver said the people killed at the grocery store were going about their daily business and “had family and friends, loves and passions and dreams of tomorrows that will no longer come.”
Madeline Gaglio, 13, came to pay her respects along with her grandmother. The teenager, who grew up in Boulder, said she felt scared when she and her grandmother went to buy flowers at another King Soopers to lay at the memorial.
“You don’t know what can happen anymore,” Gaglio said.
Denver Post staff writers Shelly Bradbury and Conrad Swanson contributed to this report.
