BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. — More than three years after the mass shooting that killed 10 people at the Boulder King Soopers grocery store in March 2021, the defendant accused was found guilty on all charges — including 10 counts of first degree murder.
Along with the 10 first-degree murder charges, the defendant was found guilty on multiple charges of extreme indifference - attempt to commit murder in the first degree.
This decision came in the wake of 10 days of testimony that included psychologists, psychiatrists, survivors, and the defendant’s family members. In total, the jury deliberated for less than one day.
The defendant faced 10 counts of first-degree murder, 38 counts of attempted first-degree murder, 1 count of first-degree assault and 6 counts of possessing a large capacity magazine.
Sentencing is expected to follow the jury's verdict. This is a developing story and will be updated.
Watch the sentencing in the live player below:
Denver7 has chosen to not include the defendant's name in our coverage of the trial to respect victims and their loved ones, and to not glorify the defendant.
Following the verdict, Colorado Governor Jared Polis issued a statement, which in part read:
“Three years ago our community felt the unbearable pain of losing ten of our fellow Coloradans in a senseless attack on the Boulder community. That day loved ones, friends, and neighbors were taken from us far too soon by an act of pure evil. Today, justice is served," said Polis.
He was arrested the same day as the mass shooting — on March 22, 2021 — but the case was stalled by several competency hearings. He was found competent to stand trial in August 2023 and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity three months later. He faces a slew of charges, including 10 counts of first-degree murder, 38 counts of attempted murder, first-degree assault, and six counts of using a large-capacity magazine in a crime, plus multiple crimes of violence.
This trial, which was overseen by Judge Ingrid Bakke, aimed to determine if the defendant was insane or not at the time of the shooting — not if he shot and killed people at the King Soopers, which the defense did not contest.
The 10 people who lost their lives that day were Suzanne Fountain, Rikki Olds, Boulder Police Officer Eric Talley, Jody Waters, Denny Stong, Tralona Bartkowiak, Neven Stanisic, Kevin Mahoney, Lynn Murray and Teri Leiker. Read more about them here.
Boulder King Soopers Shooting
Boulder strong: A day of remembrance honors the 10 lost
Denver7 followed every day of the trial leading up to the verdict. Read the summaries below.
Day one of trial | Sept. 5, 2024
Opening statements in this trial began on Thursday, Sept. 5, about three and a half years after the mass shooting.
Michael Dougherty, district attorney for the 20th Judicial District, and assistant district attorney Ken Kupfner made up the prosecution in this case. The defendant was represented by Kathryn Herold and Sam Dunn.
In Dougherty’s opening statements, he painted a picture of the scene and Boulder as a community. He said the defendant planned an intentional shooting, though the victims were random, and detailed the defendant’s steps as he killed each of the 10 victims. Dougherty argued that the defendant knew what he was doing was wrong when he dropped his weapons, took off almost all of his clothes and surrendered to police.
The central issue is the defendant's claim of being not guilty by reason of insanity, he said, clarifying that a mental illness like schizophrenia — which the defendant was diagnosed with after the shooting — does not mean somebody is insane.
He said if the jury applies the law and looks at the evidence, "you will reach the right decision in this case."
Dunn then provided opening statements for the defense.
He explained how the defendant began to exhibit signs that were the onset of a severe form of schizophrenia, namely screaming voices in his head. On the day of the shooting, he was in “throes of a psychotic episode,” Dunn said.
In a video played in court, a doctor involved in the sanity evaluations was heard asking the defendant earlier in 2024, “You said voices are what caused or resulted in you conducting a mass shooting?” He responds, “The consistent voices made me commit the mass shooting.”
“The law in Colorado says that you can understand what you’re doing is illegal and you can be insane,” he explained.
At the end of his opening statement, Dunn said the defendant was delusional and paranoid, and his reality was not the reality of the world.
Following opening statements, prosecutors began calling up their witnesses. This first day of testimony included individuals who either worked at the King Soopers, or were nearby or shopping at the grocery store.
Day two of trial | Sept. 6, 2024
Witness testimony kicked off the second day of the trial.
Jason Hebrard, an agent in charge with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation who responded to the scene, testified about creating a map of the defendant’s movements as he traveled from his home in Arvada to the Boulder supermarket.
Likewise, Aaron Wise, sergeant for the Boulder Police Department, described how he used traffic cameras, surveillance cameras, security cameras and more to track the defendant as he followed that route.
A few months before the trial began, Christopher Pyler, detective with the Westminster Police Department, had formally analyzed the defendant’s cell phone records between January and March 2021. He testified about lining up those records with multiple firearm purchases.
The fourth witness on the second day was Sarah Moonshadow, who was at the store with her adult son that day. Both ran from the shooter and escaped.
"Not thinking about anything else, other than we need to keep moving unpredictably so that we’re not traveling in a straight line," she told the jury.
Elan Shakti, 79, was also at the store that day and recalled slipping and falling while trying to run away from the shooting.
“I was instantly praying, when I found out I couldn’t move myself. I just said, 'God, I hope you're ready for me, because I think this is it,'" Shakti told the court.
A young man helped her up and out of the store. That man, later identified as Christoper Tatum, testified on Sept. 9.
Haden Steele told the jury that he remembered “Just chaos, people screaming, running, gunshots, people mobbing toward the back exit.”
After hearing from some of the survivors, the prosecution brought up Joel Hegarty, special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who specializes in tracing firearms. In great detail, he explained where the defendant purchased each of the firearms, when they were picked up, and the total cost of each transaction.
The final two witnesses on this day — Julie Keeton and James William Graham — were both in the store that day. Keeton was an employee and Graham was grabbing lunch.
“I was devastated," Graham told the jury about the aftermath. "Couldn’t eat. Couldn't sleep. Anxiety. Depression. Had to go through therapy.”
Day three of trial | Sept. 9, 2024
After the weekend, the prosecution continued calling up its witnesses, starting with Christopher Tatum, the supermarket’s assistant deli manager.
“I didn’t want to assume the worst immediately," Tatum said. "And then I saw customers running and being afraid, as they should have been. And that’s when it started to hit."
As he tried to move employees and customers out of the store — he went back inside four times, he believed — he picked up Shakti, who had previously testified about falling in the chaos and being unable to get back up.
“She was somebody’s grandma — that’s my main thought," he said. "And so I picked her up. I wasn't really concerned about anything else. Was just getting her out."
Paul Johnson, former head clerk of the Table Mesa King Soopers, recalled trying to “rationalize” the sound of gunshots. He ran from the store.
Mark Suban, scientific and technical photographer for the FBI, explained to the jury that he was instructed to fully document the crime scene and review all camera video from the store and body-worn camera footage. Using these resources, he created an animated map of how the shooter, victims and witnesses moved around as the shooting unfolded. This map was used several times during the trial.
Sarah Cantu, who was a major crimes detective with the Boulder Police Department at the time, walked the jury through a split screen, which showed both Suban’s map and surveillance footage.
Nicholas Edwards, the son of Sarah Moonshadow who had previously testified, briefly spoke about feeling paralyzed before he ran away from the store with his mother.
Bryan Capobianco, police officer with the Boulder Police Department, told the jury about responding to the scene not knowing how many shooters were at the store. He said he saw fellow police Officer Talley on the ground. Talley was one of the 10 victims.
Day four of trial | Sept. 10, 2024
Multiple police officers and other emergency personnel were highlighted on the fourth day of the trial, as well as some other survivors.
King Soopers employee Khagendra “K” Malla, through an interpreter, testified in court that she believed the gunshots were balloons popping. During the shooting, he ran to a shelf, covered himself in crackers and hid until an officer escorted him outside the store. Angela Peacock, a King Soopers employee, hid in the trailer of a semi that had backed up to the store. She said she saw the shooter at one point, and that he “wasn’t spraying bullets everywhere.”
Boulder Police Officer Bryan Plyter said he responded to the scene as soon as he got the call, and arrived to see multiple victims dead on the ground.
"I realized that we lost one of our own, and I made the decision that I was probably going to lose my own life too," Plyter said after seeing Officer Talley's body on the ground. "I had made a decision that I was probably going to lose my life going into this store, I thought about my child, that I may never see him again."
He testified about seeing the shooter in the store, and how the group of officers around him returned fire when the defendant shot at them.
Jenny Schmeits, a fellow Boulder police officer, also said she was not sure she was going to make it home when the shooter opened fire on them. Schmeits said she helped cover two officers as they searched for the shooter and helped victims coming out of the store get to a safe place.
Civil Deputy Jeff Brunkow with the Boulder County Sheriff's Office testified that dispatch believed there were multiple shooters in the store. He recalled seeing a SWAT Team go into the store and come out with the shooter, who had a bloody leg and was in just his underwear.
Officer Richard "DJ" Smith, who has since retired from the Boulder police force, was among the officers who went into the store on the day of the shooting. He remembered how “eerily quiet” it was before the shooter began firing at the officers. Other officers — Alexander Kicera and Boulder Police Department Officer Michael West — also testified about the same experience from their perspective. Brandon Braun, sergeant with CU's Police Department, was also in this group of officers and recalled hearing gunshots and then felt glass fall on his face.
"It’s affected me tremendously in every aspect of my life and my family’s life… it has affected the way I have responded to things, it has affected my mental health in a lot of ways that I needed to work on, and it made it a difficult decision as well for me to continue to do the job I love to do,” Braun told the court.
Boulder Officer Richard Steidell was the person who shot the defendant. He testified that it “felt like forever” before he realized that one of his return shots had hit him.
Samuel Kilburn, firefighter with the City of Boulder, recalled how several officers moved toward the back of the store to help people fleeing and move them to "relative safety" to another business nearby. While all this was happening, Kilburn said he didn't know where the shooter was. He went to the roof, where a SWAT team was set up and stayed there for several hours, covering a door. Once he came back down, once the shooter was in custody, he said he wandered the parking lot aimlessly.
When asked about taking the shooter into custody, Sgt. Larry Ottosen, traffic sergeant with the City and County of Broomfield, said he "wasn't talking to himself, or speaking to someone who wasn’t there, (and) wasn’t fixated on innocuous objects at all."
Day five of trial | Sept. 11, 2024
Sarah Cantu, senior investigator with the district attorney's office, was called to the stand for the second time, after previously testified on day 3 of the trial.
This time around, she explained the evidence that was collected at the scene, which included six 30-round magazines for the Ruger. Those types of magazines are illegal in Colorado. She also listed the firearms that investigators found at the defendant’s home.
Aimee Qulia, who has worked in the firearms unit of the FBI, provided an in-depth analysis for the jury about the bullet holes, impacts and trajectories within the King Soopers.
For the first time, the autopsies of the victims were brought up in the courtroom. Out of respect for the victims and their families, we are not including the details of those reports, but they were presented by Dr. Meredith Frank and Dr. Daniel Lingamfelter.
Four of the victims — Murray, Leiker, Waters, and Fountain — had green tip bullets recovered from their bodies during the autopsy, Frank said. Green tip bullets are designed to pierce steel.
Amber Cronan, special agent with the FBI, testified about her role in searching the defendant’s car, where they found a packing slip from GrabAGun.com, the defendant’s wallet, a green rifle bag in the backseat of the car on the floorboard, and a magazine under the driver's seat with 29 5.56 rounds. The magazine had huge bullets with small green tips, she recalled. There were more magazines found inside the rifle bag.
Day six of trial | Sept. 12, 2024
On day 6, veteran FBI special agent Stephanie Benitez testified she was one of 30 law enforcement officials who searched the defendant’s home following a search warrant. That search warrant authorized the seizing of body armor, proof of residency, any type of explosives, diaries, journals, photos and weapons.
Photos of items discovered in his house were presented in court which showed various weapons including an AR-style rifle with six magazines, a handgun and various other weapons and accessories. The defense objected to the photo evidence arguing it was gathered from the shooter’s home where multiple other family members lived.Part of Agent Benitez’s role included helping to compile a list of victims for family notifications. Benitez said one way victims were identified was by tallying the number of people who wanted their vehicles returned from the Boulder King Soopers parking lot.
Survivors of the shooting testified, including Jennifer Jacobson – who was witness to the beginning of the tragedy before the suspect went into the store.She said she was only in the store for minutes and left the store at the same time as Kevin Mahoney, one of the victims. She said that Mahoney kept turning around as if wondering why the woman was following him right behind.
Jacobsen said that as both opened their trunks and started unloading groceries, "I smiled at him, he smiled at me, and we both chuckled." Shortly after, Jacobsen heard a pop, then another “pop pop” before seeing the gunman one row behind where she was parked. She saw the defendant firing shots into a truck which turned out to be a work van driven by Neven Stanisic, the first person who was killed.
She recalled thinking that the gunman was going to shoot Mahoney, looking “very determined and just went walking straight to where I assumed [Mahoney] was returning his cart."
Fearing the gunman was going to come after her, she put her head down and “thought about my daughter.” Hearing more shots close by, she said she made eye contact with the defendant for a “split second” before shooting victim Tralona Bartkowiak “point blank.”Jacobsen testified she then saw the shooter walk through the automatic doors of the store while she sped off to avoid driving near the windows of the store fearing the shooter could shoot out the windows.As she left the parking lot, she noticed a police patrol unit jump the curb rushing to the scene.
Once home, Jacobsen wrote down as much detail she could remember, including a map, the time and a physical description of the shooter. That paper was entered into evidence in which she described the shooter as “stocky, blue jeans on, huge rifle, it was loud, bullet proof vest, brown short curly hair.”Sarah Chen, a King Soopers pharmacist working at the store the day of the shooting, testified she heard the gunfire and the shooter screaming “this is fun, this is fun, this is such fun.”"Next thing I heard was, 'I surrender! I’m naked, I surrender! Don’t shoot… I’m unarmed, don’t shoot!'" Chen said, adding she remembered getting patted down by officers as they were released from the scene.
On day 6, the jury saw surveillance video from inside the store, including footage near cash registers showing the gunman killing Denny Stong.Stephanie Sears, who works for the United States Postal Inspection Service, took to the stand to testify to her work in preserving, extracting and analyzing digital evidence. Sears testified she found a phone connected to the shooter and later – after a search warrant was obtained – seized 25 other devices.
On the shooter's phone, Sears told the court that the number of images on the device that appeared to be related to this shooting "was extremely overwhelming." She said she found approximately 6,000 items related to mass shootings at King Soopers. The shooter also searched online for information on other mass shootings and how to modify a rifle with a rubber band to change the trigger pull. Sears testified that the gunman searched other addresses in Boulder including a Target on Pearl Street, a Whole Food store off Pearl Street and a Safeway on Arapahoe.
Day seven of trial | Sept. 13, 2024
Prosecutors dug into more of the defendant’s purchase history of weapons on day 7 of the trial. Boulder police detective Sarah Cantu returned to the stand testifying that the shooter purchased 10-round magazines for an assault rifle, magazines, a Ruger AR-556 223 REM, among other items.On day 7, it was revealed he searched “what is the most deadly type of round, bullet” and “are 30-round magazines legal in Colorado?”Detective Cantu said the suspect purchased boxes of green-tip ammo – totaling 80 rounds – and when asked if investigators found any of those rounds at his home – she said all the green-tip ammo was found inside the King Soopers store.
A timeline of the gunman’s movements the day of shooting was revealed in court.The gunman’s mental state was probed in day 7 testimony when Dr. B. Thomas Gray, a board-certified forensic psychologist – who visited the defendant several times at the state hospital – took the stand. He said the shooter did not reveal much information and would isolate by choice, but once he started taking anti-psychotic meds in March 2023, his condition improved.
Gray testified that the defendant said he had auditory hallucinations and that he appeared to show signs of “moderate degree” of suspiciousness in situations, which could be considered delusional paranoia. The defendant refused to talk about the shooting.
More of the shooter’s background and upbringing was revealed including various episodes of isolation and situations in which he thought he was being followed.
Gray testified that the defendant said he heard voices "about once a week" but it escalated to twice a week in the months leading up to the shooting. When Gray asked about the voices, the defendant reportedly did not provide details. The most that doctors learned from the defendant was, "The voices are yelling and screaming." The psychologist said he could not support the conclusion that the defendant was being directed by the voice of God or delusions.
Gray testified that the presence of the voices showed there was a mental illness, but there was a lack of evidence that the voices or any disturbance in thinking prevented the defendant from knowing right from wrong.
Following more questioning, Gray said he and another doctor opined that the defendant was sane at the time of the shooting, but they also wrote in their report that they were not entirely confident in that opinion. The psychologist said they were confident that the suspect had schizophrenia but they were hesitant about his state of mind due to his inability to provide more information.
Day eight of trial | Sept. 16, 2024
The week started off with testimony from another prosecution witness – a forensic psychologist – who conducted the sanity evaluation of the defendant.
Dr. Loandra Torres, director of training at the Court Services Department, first met the gunman six months after the shooting and testified she believes he has schizophrenia, but that alone is not sufficient to call someone insane.
Dr. Torres said her investigation found the defendant displayed some “odd behavior” in 2019, including hearing voices and paranoia. Family of the gunman told Torres they sometimes saw him talking and laughing to himself. Two family members also told her the family had been followed by the FBI, but that was not expanded on.It was "hard to know where reality ends and delusion begins" as far as the defendant's paranoia about being followed, Torres said. She added that the family had no reason to believe he was being followed.
Day eight testimony also focuses on the defendant’s use and lack of use of psychological medication and decline in condition during the early part of 2023.
In March 2023, his treatment team sought a court order to administer involuntary medication. They were able to administer an antipsychotic medication and as a result, the defendant began to engage more and would provide "spontaneous information," Torres said.
By August of 2023, the defendant’s condition had improved.
Torres told the courtroom that there was a lack of evidence to suggest his mental health symptoms made him incapable of distinguishing what was right and wrong at the time of the shooting, but she could not rule out some sort of psychotic process going on. During her meetings with the defendant, she never heard him say something that came off delusional and could not identify any clear tie between a delusional thought process and the crimes.
In watching a June 2024 video of an interview with the defendant, Torres said she believed he appeared more engaged than previous interviews and provided more details – including buying weapons and practicing using them.
Torres said after watching those interviews, she felt a "little more confident" than before about their opinion that the defendant was sane at the time of the shooting.
Day 8 also saw the first defense witness – Dr. Hareesh Pillai, a psychiatrist at the Colorado Mental Health Hospital. He was the defendant’s primary psychiatric provider while at the hospital in Pueblo and played a role in diagnosing him with schizophrenia.
One of the main symptoms he noticed in their first meeting was "thought blocking" — an interruption to normal flow of thought, such as when somebody stops talking mid-sentence. He also recalled noticing that the defendant appeared to respond to internal stimuli, and often looked over his shoulder like he was hearing something behind him that Pillai did not hear.
Pillai said despite the antipsychotic medication, the defendant still had some symptoms, but there was an improvement compared to their first meeting in December 2021.
And while the defendant refused mental health medications, through a court order, he has been on meds ever since.Pillai said after three years, the defendant still does not believe he has schizophrenia most of the time, though he has said once or twice that he has the illness. Pillai said the defendant's judgment is so poor that if he stopped taking medication, that brief insight would disappear.
Pillai was not asked to conduct a sanity evaluation.
The defense then called the defendant’s mother to the stand – who, while testifying through an interpreter – said her son was a cute, smart child before he started “changing” in 2019. She claimed that he believed people were chasing him and that he had grown paranoid about being watched.
The day before the shooting, the family celebrated Mother’s Day, which was a holiday in Syria – where the family is from. On the day of the shooting, she said she had breakfast with her son and told him to shave and get a haircut. That was the last time she saw her son before testifying in court.
As packages were delivered to the family home in the months before the shooting – she was asked by prosecutors if she knew what her son was up to. "We didn’t know what he was up to," Alhidid said, thinking the boxes might have contained a musical instrument.
Prosecutors pushed back asking if Alhidid previously told investigators that she heard a banging noise upstairs, and that the defendant's brothers had gone to check on him and they brought down a rifle. Alhidid said she did recall that, and said her son had a round jammed in the firearm.
She said the defendant was going to return the firearm the following day. Continue reading to learn more about what happened on day eight.
Day nine of trial | Sept. 17, 2024
Despite obvious signs of the gunman’s mental instability in the years leading up to the 2021 mass shooting, the defendant’s father testified that he didn’t seek mental health treatment for his son because of the possible harm to the family’s reputation.
Moustafa Alissa, the Syrian-born father of the 25-year-old defendant, took the stand on Day 9 of the trial and told the jury his son’s mental health began to deteriorate soon after he graduated high school. Still, Alissa said the family didn’t seek treatment for his son to protect his family’s reputation amid cultural pressures.
"It’s shameful in our culture to say our son’s crazy, and also, we were thinking he was probably possessed by a spirit," Alissa said through an interpreter.
The father recalled an incident at his home about two to three days before the King Soopers shooting where he encountered the gunman with a machine gun that apparently had jammed, and the defendant was banging it on the floor to try to get it unjammed. But he testified he knew nothing about any other weapons the defendant had and believed his son was harmless.
“We knew he was sick. He had something wrong, but we don’t know what it was," he said.
Earlier in the day, Dr. Michelle Colarelli, who treated the shooter at the state hospital, testified that the defendant was responding well to medication and opened up to her a little more about his actions in the days just before the mass shooting.
When asked if the gunman had been thinking about committing the offense a month before March 22, 2021, Dr. Colarelli responded by saying, "Yes.'
She also testified that the defendant explained that he had to drive to the site from Arvada and estimated it would take him 30 minutes to get there. The defendant also indicated that he had visited the site of the attack two days before the shooting.
Day ten of trial | Sept. 18, 2024
Day 10 testimony in the Boulder King Soopers shooting trial revealed significant changes in the defendant’s behavior, as described by his brother. The defendant became withdrawn, forgetful, and emotionless after high school, raising concerns about his mental health.
An assistant professor in psychology at University of Colorado, Dr. Ahmad Adi, testified next.
He highlighted the stigma around mental illness in Middle Eastern cultures, which may have influenced the family’s perception and handling of the defendant’s condition.
The defense then brought Dr. Joshua Hatfield to the stand. He met with the defendant immediately following the shooting.
Dr. Hatfield diagnosed the defendant with schizophrenia based on his observations and family records but noted the defendant never provided a motive for the shooting.
Dr. Hatfield testified the defendant "consistently denied having psychotic symptoms" and, in an August 24, 2021 meeting, allegedly talked about hearing voices and "all he would say is that it was just yelling."
Dr. Ian Lamoureux, a forensic psychiatrist, testified that he reviewed extensive records and videos, concluding that the defendant had schizophrenia in partial remission but could still distinguish right from wrong.
Dr. Lamoureux found no evidence of auditory hallucinations during the shooting and believed the defendant’s actions showed planning and intent after reviewing footage from King Soopers.
“It was quite remarkable just how focused and fixated he was on carrying out the shooting," he said.
He emphasized that schizophrenia does not automatically impair one’s ability to understand right from wrong and noted the defendant’s behavior indicated he was sane at the time of the shooting.
Watch the full verdict in the video player below:
Watch Denver7's previous coverage of the Boulder King Soopers shooting in the video playlist above.
