Preliminary hearings scheduled in trial of man who killed 10 people at Colorado supermarket

DENVER — Opening statements are scheduled Thursday in the trial of a mentally ill man who shot and killed 10 people at a Colorado supermarket in 2021.

Police say Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa attacked people on the move both inside and outside the store on the Boulder campus, killing most of them in just over a minute.

No one, including Alissa’s lawyers, disputes that he was the shooter. Alissa, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia after the shooting, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, so the three-week trial is expected to focus on whether he was legally sane — able to understand the difference between right and wrong — at the time of the shooting.

Alissa faces 10 counts of first-degree murder, multiple attempted murders and other offenses, including being prohibited in Colorado from possessing six high-capacity magazines after earlier mass shootings.

The burden of proving he was sane will be on prosecutors, who will have to show that Alissa knew what he was doing and intended to kill people at the King Soopers store.

It is not known why Alissa carried out the mass shooting.

The closest testimony to a possible motive that has emerged so far comes from a mental health expert who testified during a competency hearing last year that Alissa said he bought the firearm to carry out a mass shooting and suggested he wanted police to kill him.

The defense argued in court papers that his relatives said he irrationally believed the FBI was following him and that he was talking to himself as if he were talking to someone who wasn’t there. But prosecutors point out that Alissa had never been treated for mental illness before and was able to work up to 60 hours a week before the shooting, something they say would not be possible for someone with a severe mental illness.

Alissa’s trial was delayed after experts repeatedly found he was unable to understand the legal proceedings or assist in his defense. But after Alissa improved after being forcibly medicated, Judge Ingrid Bakke ruled in October that he was mentally competent, allowing the case to resume.