A mentally ill man who killed 10 people at a Colorado supermarket in 2021 was convicted Monday of murder and faces life in prison. Defense attorneys did not dispute that Ahmad Alissa, who has schizophrenia, fatally shot 10 people, including a police officer, in the college town of Boulder. But he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, with the defense arguing he couldn't tell right from wrong at the time of the attack. Prosecutors had to prove Alissa was sane to win guilty verdicts, the AP reports.
Alissa did not visibly react as the judge began reciting the jury's verdicts. Judge Ingrid Bakke had warned against outbursts. There was restrained crying on the victims' side of the courtroom as the murder convictions were read. In March 2021, Alissa started shooting immediately after getting out of his car in a King Soopers parking lot. He killed most of the victims in just over a minute and surrendered after an officer shot him in the leg. Prosecutors argued he didn't fire randomly and showed an ability to make decisions by pursuing people who were running and trying to hide from him. He twice passed by a 91-year-old man who continued to shop, unaware of the shooting.
He came armed with steel-piercing bullets and illegal magazines that can hold 30 rounds of ammunition, which prosecutors said showed he took steps to make the attack as deadly as possible. Several members of Alissa's family testified that he had become withdrawn and spoke less a few years before the shooting. He later began acting paranoid and showed signs of hearing voices, they said, and his condition worsened after he got COVID-19 in late 2020. Alissa was diagnosed with schizophrenia after the attack, and experts said the behaviors described by relatives are consistent with the onset of the disease. State forensic psychologists concluded he was sane during the shooting. The defense did not have to provide any evidence and did not present any experts to say that Alissa was insane.
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