The gunman who massacred 10 people at Kings Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, in 2021 was sentenced Monday to life in prison without parole.
Judge Ingrid Bakke sentenced Ahmad Alissa hours after a jury convicted him of 10 counts first-degree murder, 38 charges of attempted murder, one count of assault and six counts of possessing illegal, large-capacity magazines. Alissa, 25, will serve 10 consecutive life sentences for the murders and another 1,334 years for the rest of the charges.
Alissa has schizophrenia, and his defense team had tried to have him acquitted by reason of insanity. While Alissa’s attorneys did not dispute that he had mowed down 10 people, one of them a police officer, they argued he could not tell right from wrong at the time.
But neither the jury nor the prosecution bought it. Neither did psychologists who evaluated Alissa, despite his claim to having heard “killing voices” before his rampage. They found his ability to tell right from wrong to be intact, as evidenced by his fear that he could be jailed or killed by police.
“This was not about mental illness. This was about brutal, intentional violence,” said District Attorney Michael Dougherty.
Alissa drove to Boulder on March 22 looking for a supermarket and pulled into the King Soopers parking lot with a legally purchased semi-automatic Ruger AR-556 pistol and began firing.
He killed Boulder Police Officer Eric Talley, the first to respond to the scene; Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62, and Jody Waters, 65. Many of the victims’ family members read impact statements after the verdict.
With News Wire Services
