Prosecutors on Wednesday charged a 21-year-old man accused of fatally shooting 10 people at a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket last month with nearly four dozen additional counts of attempted murder, assault and weapons offenses, court documents showed.
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa was already charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder stemming from the March 22 shooting rampage at the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, about 28 miles northwest of Denver.
Alissa surrendered to law enforcement officers at the crime scene, about two miles from the University of Colorado’s flagship campus, after he was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with police, authorities said.
Ten people were killed in the massacre, including a responding Boulder police officer, and authorities have not disclosed a possible motive for the shootings.
The victims were identified as Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; police officer Eric Talley, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jody Waters, 65.
Prosecutors added 33 counts of attempted murder, one count of first-degree assault and 10 counts of possession of a large-capacity ammunition magazine, which is illegal under Colorado law.
Authorities earlier said Alissa legally purchased a Ruger AR-556 pistol that he used in the attack.
The attempted-murder charges name 18 victims, including many police officers, under different theories of extreme indifference and deliberation.
Alissa is being held without bond at an undisclosed lockup. He was transferred from the Boulder County jail ”due to safety concerns and threats,” the sheriff’s office has said.
If convicted of even one count of first-degree murder, Alissa faces a mandatory prison sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
No motive for the shooting has been released, but the shooter’s brother has told the press he suffers from mental illness.
Ali Aliwi Alissa said his brother was paranoid, and that in high school he would talk about ”being chased, someone is behind him, someone is looking for him.”
”When he was having lunch with my sister in a restaurant, he said, ‘People are in the parking lot, they are looking for me.’ She went out, and there was no one. We didn’t know what was going on in his head,” his brother said.
Ali Aliwi Alissa said at the time that he was certain the shooting was ”not at all a political statement, it’s mental illness.”
”The guy used to get bullied a lot in high school. He was like an outgoing kid, but after he went to high school and got bullied a lot, he started becoming anti-social.”
The state public defender’s office, which represents Alissa, does not publicly comment on its cases, but one of his lawyers requested at his initial hearing that Alissa undergo a mental health assessment.
The Colorado incident was among at least seven deadly mass shootings in the United States over the past month.
Information from Reuters and Newsmax staff was used in this report.
Source: Newmax
