BOULDER, Colo. — A man who gunned down 10 people in a mass shooting was not insane when he unleashed terror in a Boulder King Soopers but instead was a calculated killer who understood what he did was wrong, a prosecutor told jurors Thursday in an opening statement swiftly disputed by the defense attorney.
Years of legal wrangling over the mental state of Ahmad Alissa during the March 2021 shooting will likely continue through his three-week trial.
Alissa's attorney argued that his client, who has been diagnosed with treatment-resistant schizophrenia, suffered from hallucinations — hearing screaming voices, seeing people who weren't there and believing he was being followed — in the runup to the 2021 shooting at the King Soopers grocery store.
Alissa has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. No one, including Alissa’s lawyers, disputes he was the shooter.
“We’re not running from that. But if you’re going to point the finger at this guy, you deserve to hear the truth about him. This man, Ahmad Alissa, is an ill individual,” said his attorney, Samuel Dunn, in his opening statement.
A prosecutor argued Alissa was able to determine right from wrong and therefore sane.
Dressed in a striped white dress shirt, Alissa sat beside his attorneys in court, sometimes swiveling in his chair and turning to look up at a video screen where lawyers presented evidence and bullet points of their arguments.
Relatives of the victims filled rows on the opposite side of court, dabbing their eyes at times and comforting one another.
Alissa is charged with 10 counts of murder, 15 counts of attempted murder and other offenses.
Alissa’s motive, if he had one, has remained unclear and Dougherty did not posit one in opening statements. He argued that Alissa acted with intent and full knowledge of his wrongdoing.
Most of those shot inside and outside the store were killed in just over a minute. Alissa targeted people trying to flee — and made a special effort to finish off those he wounded with additional shots, Dougherty pointed out.
“The shooter prepared to kill them, planned to kill them, and went and executed 10 people at King Soopers. That’s why you’re here,” Dougherty told the jury after showing photos of each victim and describing why each one was at the store that day.
No one survived the shooting with gunshot wounds. After shooting eight people, Alissa prowled the store — quiet except for background music still playing over the store speakers — then spotted and killed Suzanne Fountain, 59, as she left a hiding spot in another aisle.
His final victim was Boulder Police officer Eric Talley, a father of seven and one of the first three police officers who entered the store.
Alissa surrendered to other police who arrived, voluntarily stripping down to his underwear and complying with their instructions as they approached and handcuffed him.
“There’s no hallucinating, there’s no delusion, there’s no confusion,” Dougherty said of Alissa’s behavior.
Alissa’s attorney described a range of hallucinations, delusions and social withdrawal that relatives said Alissa experienced before the shooting and that psychiatrists later verified.
The schizophrenia was so severe it took years for him to engage with therapists and only after he was given a drug, clozapine, which Dunn pointed out is used only when other treatments don't work.
Before the shooting, Alissa had gone without treatment as a member of a Syrian immigrant family whose father believed possession by an evil spirit, or djinn, was to blame, Dunn said.
“I want you to imagine that between your ears, where you have no shelter or reprieve, you can’t identify the source of it: You just hear yelling and screaming," Dunn said. "That’s what was being broadcast in Ahmad Alissa’s mind.”
Once, Alissa's father awoke at 3 a.m. and his son, who was also awake, asked if he had seen a man in the bathroom. The father looked and nobody was there, Dunn said.
Dunn described relatives testifying that Alissa was emotionally withdrawn and spoke only when spoken to leading up to the shooting.
“The law says you can have intent and be insane," Dunn said. "But what the law doesn’t allow is you to ignore plain, clear evidence someone’s mental illness that is severe and chronic and say that person is sane, that person is capable of telling right from wrong."
He told jurors to use “common sense, apply the law," and find Alissa insane.
If successful, Alissa's plea of not guilty by reason of insanity could enable him to avoid prison and instead be committed indefinitely to the state mental hospital.
Prosecution witnesses who testified Thursday included Alison Sheets, an emergency room doctor who heard the gunfire while shopping and hid sideways on a shelf of potato chips. There, she heard more shots and somebody in the next aisle taking their last breath — a sound she recognized from work.
“It was a sigh, almost,” she said. Prosecutors said it was Fountain's dying breath.
A mental health evaluator testified during a competency hearing in 2022 that Alissa said he bought firearms to carry out a mass shooting and suggested he wanted police to kill him.
Relatives have said he irrationally believed that the FBI was following him and that he would talk to himself as if he were talking to someone who was not there, according to court documents.