Law enforcement agencies continued to investigate the mass shooting in Boulder, Colo.
Suspect known to FBI from unrelated matter
Families mourned the dead and multiple law enforcement agencies pressed ahead Wednesday with what they said would be a monthslong investigation of the shooting at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. Officials hadn’t released new details on the investigation by late Wednesday.
Police identified Syrian-born Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa of Arvada, Colorado, who came to the United States when he was 3, as the shooter in Monday’s rampage. He was known to the FBI through his association with someone else who it had been investigating on an unrelated matter, multiple reports said.
The 21-year-old was in jail and scheduled to make his first court appearance Thursday on murder charges. No lawyer was listed for him in court records.
He had ranted on Facebook over the past 18 months about “racist islamophobic people,” then-president Donald Trump, and not having a girlfriend, the U.K.’S Daily Mail reported.
Police have not released a motive, but the Daily Beast quoted his brother, 34-year-old Ali Aliwi Alissa, as saying his sibling was “paranoid.” He said there was no political motive in the killings. “It’s mental illness,” Ali Alissa said.
Ali Alissa said his brother was bullied in high school and became “anti-social.”
Ahmad Alissa was engaged by police at least twice before, including one incident in 2017, when he punched a classmate, the Denver Post reported. Ahmad Alissa said the classmate called him “racial names” weeks earlier, but witnesses said they heard nothing.
He was convicted of misdemeanor assault in 2018.
According to the Daily Mail, Ahmad Alissa wrote in a July 2019 Facebook post wrote: “Yeah if these racist Islamophobic people would stop hacking my phone and let me have a normal life I probably could.”
He also railed about Trump’s immigration policies.
The Post quoted former high school wrestling teammates as describing Ahmad Alissa as having a quick temper, “violent,” and “scary to be around.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of people paid their respects at a growing makeshift memorial near the supermarket, adorning it with wreaths, candles, banners reading “#Boulderstrong” and 10 crosses with blue hearts and the victims’ names.
Several community vigils were planned to honor the victims. The Boulder Police Department invited the public to show support for officer Eric Talley, who was killed, by witnessing a police procession Wednesday as his body was taken from the coroner’s office to a funeral home in the Denver suburb of Aurora.