A Colorado man who shot and killed 10 people at a Boulder supermarket in 2021 was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Monday after a jury rejected an insanity defense and found him guilty of murder.
Ahmad Alissa, 25, was found guilty of all 55 charges, including 10 counts of first-degree murder, in connection with the March 22, 2021, attack at King Soopers.
Twentieth Judicial District Chief Judge Ingrid Bakke sentenced Alissa to 10 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, one for each murder count, plus additional prison terms for the remaining charges.
Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said before Bakke imposed the sentence: “This was not about mental illness. This was about brutal, intentional violence, for which he deserves the maximum.”
Alissa, armed with a Ruger AR-556 pistol, opened fire on people inside the supermarket before being shot in the leg by police and arrested.
Jurors deliberated for about six hours after being assigned the case Friday afternoon.
Alissa remained seated as the verdicts were read and did not appear to show any demonstrative reaction. He appeared to spend much of the trial talking to his defense team.
Alissa’s defense attorneys had not disputed that their client was the shooter, but they argued for a verdict of not guilty by reason of diminished capacity because, they said, he could not distinguish between right and wrong when he opened fire. He was later diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Victims, friends and relatives of the victims told the court Monday that their lives had been changed forever. They described being unable to sleep and one police officer said she was so devastated by post-traumatic stress disorder that she quit the job she had loved for 30 years.
Madeline Talley, daughter of slain Boulder police officer Eric Talley, said the last time she saw her father alive was the night before the shooting.
“I told him I was going to bed and he gave me a hug. He said, ‘Okay, good night,'” she said. “That was the last thing he ever said to me. The next time I saw him, he was in a casket.”
Eric Talley, 51, was the first law enforcement officer to arrive at the King Soopers. He was a father of seven and an 11-year veteran of the Boulder Police Department.
The other victims were Denny Stong, 20; Cousins Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jody Waters, 65.
Alissa, who lived in the Denver suburb of Arvada, purchased an assault rifle six days before the attack, according to an arrest affidavit.
Outside the courtroom after the verdicts were read, his brother insisted that his loved ones could not reasonably have known of his violent potential.
“We were on the front lines. If we knew he was dangerous, he would be dangerous to us first, before anyone else,” older brother Ali Aliwi Alissa told NBC affiliate KUSA in Denver. “His illness started to become normal to us, that he’s antisocial.”
Stanisic’s sister, Nicolina Stanisic, fondly remembers that her brother, a repairman, was always kind and often bought her ice cream.
“There are no words that can describe how much we love and miss him,” she told the court during the sentencing.
“Our life without Cousins is not a whole, complete life. There is someone who is always missing, and that is him in our household,” she said. “Before, we could always talk and laugh together. And now there is hardly anything to talk and laugh about. Most days it is quiet.”
Dougherty said after the verdict that the total sentence imposed was 10 life terms, plus 1,334 years in prison.
Alissa “chose to kill as many people as possible at King Soopers” and had been doing so since early January 2021, Dougherty said.
Erika Mahoney’s father was murdered. “I never expected my father to be running for his life in a grocery store parking lot,” she said after the verdict.
Erika Mahoney was six months pregnant when her father was murdered. She now has two children.
“If there’s one thing I want for my children and for every child in this country, it’s that they don’t have to grow up in constant fear of mass shootings,” she said. “We have to find a way to stop them.”
Madeline Talley, who was 16 when her father was killed, says the shooting left her unable to be with her father during key moments in her life, including getting her driver’s license, her first job and her 18th birthday.
“He wasn’t there to interrogate my first boyfriend, which he always said he would do,” she said. “If I get married, he won’t be there to walk me down the aisle.”
But she also told the court that she forgives Alissa and that she hopes he will one day face the consequences of his actions and be reconciled with God.
“My father didn’t deserve to die. But if he could say one thing now, it would be that he doesn’t want what happened to rule my life,” she said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
