The gunman who massacred 10 people at the Kings Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, in 2021 was sentenced Monday to life imprisonment without parole.
Judge Ingrid Bakke sentenced Ahmad Alissa hours after a jury convicted him of 10 counts of first-degree murder, 38 counts of attempted murderone count of assault and six counts of possession of illegal large capacity magazines. Alissa, 25, will serve 10 consecutive life sentences for the murders and an additional 1,334 years for the rest of the charges.
Alissa has schizophrenia, and his defense team had tried to get him acquitted reason for madness. While Alissa’s lawyers did not dispute that he had mowed down 10 peopleone of them a policethey claimed he couldn’t 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 have heard “killing voices” before his rampage. They found that his ability to distinguish between right and wrong was intact, as evidenced by his fear that he might be imprisoned or killed by the 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 started shooting.
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 sentencing.
With News Wire Services