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Police release mugshot of accused Colorado mass shooter, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa
Colorado police have released chilling mugshot of the man accused of killing 10 people in a mass shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21, was arrested following a shootout with police in a King Sooper grocery store on Monday, March 22.
The Syrian native is being held on 10 counts of first-degree murder after he allegedly stormed into King Soopers grocery store in Boulder on Monday afternoon, March 22 and began shooting at workers, customers and cops. He allegedly shot ten people including a police officer.
The suspect surrendered at the scene after he was shot in the leg and was hauled off in handcuffs. He had stripped off half his clothes before being arrested and then asked to speak to his mommy, authorities said.
Alissa’s brother, Ali Aliwi , 34, said he was mentally ill.
He told The Daily Beast that his brother is “very anti-social” and had paranoid episodes in which he believed people were following him.
It also surfaced Tuesday March 23 that he once ranted on Facebook about “islamophobic people” and even reposted someone else’s “Islamophobia” post lamenting the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019 that left 51 people dead.
“The Muslims at the #christchurch mosque were not the victims of a single shooter,” the posting said. “They were the victims of the entire Islamophobia industry that vilified them.”
Court documents revealed that Alissa bought a gun a week before the shooting.
The Denver Post discovered court records from 2017 detailing an incident in which Mr Alissa, then 18, attacked a classmate at his high school.
According to court documents, he punched his classmate in the head unprovoked, and once the boy fell to the ground, Mr Alissa continued to attack him. The classmate was treated for cuts and bruises to his head, according to an affidavit.
Mr. Alissa was charged with third-degree assault, and was sentenced to two months probation and 48 hours of community service.
The publication also spoke with some of Mr Alissa’s former wrestling teammates, who said he was short-tempered and violent.
Dayton Marvel, a former teammate, said “he was kind of scary to be around” and recalled an incident in 2018 in which Mr Alissa had an outburst and threatened to kill people following an intra-team match.
“His senior year, during the wrestle-offs to see who makes varsity, he actually lost his match and quit the team and yelled out in the wrestling room that he was like going to kill everybody,” Mr Marvel said. “Nobody believed him. We were just all kind of freaked out by it, but nobody did anything about it.”
Another teammate, Angel Hernandez, said Mr Alissa got into a fistfight with another wrestler following the match after the wrestler teased him for losing.