Editor's note: 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. This trial aims 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 is not contesting. Therefore, we have removed words such as "alleged" and "suspected" from our trial coverage when referring to him.
BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. — The jury trial is underway to determine if a defendant accused of shooting and killing 10 people at a King Soopers store in Boulder on March 22, 2021 was insane at the time of the shooting.
The defendant was arrested the same day as the mass shooting, 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.
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.
Opening statements began on the morning of Sept. 5. Denver7 will follow each day of this trial. Read the latest below.
Denver7's Coverage of the Boulder King Soopers Shooting
Tuesday, Sept. 10
The prior day's testimony ended with Bryan Capobianco, a Boulder Police Department who testified as to what he saw and experienced as one of the first three officers to respond to the scene of the shooting at the Table Mesa King Soopers.
Court began Tuesday with testimony from Khagendra “K” Malla, a King Soopers employee, who — speaking through an interpreter — described thinking balloons were popping when the shooting began. His supervisor at the time told Malla to lay on the ground, thinking he was very sure he would be killed.
Photos from that day showed Malla was hiding on the right side of the cash register he was stationed at that day. The shooter could be seen nearby wearing a vest and with his gun near his shoulder.
Mall told the courtroom he eventually ran to a shelf in aisle nine, covered himself in crackers and hid for about 15-20 minutes. He eventually saw an officer near him and police removed him from the shelf, telling him he was safe and cops escorted him to the door.
He was excused from the stand following his testimony after there was no cross examination from the defense.
The next witness was Boulder Police Officer Bryan Plyter, who was assigned to patrol Pearl St. Mall that day. He sprinted out of the annex and drove to the Table Mesa King Soopers once he got a call to respond to the grocery store.
As he arrived to the scene, he found what he called "a stack of officers" outside the store. As they all made entry, Plyter saw some of the victims dead on the ground. As he made entry into the store, he heard Officer Pam Gignac that the shooter had a rifle.
Plyter said that kind of gun heightened his awareness of what officers were dealing with. Plyter testified he was "a little more scared," as he had a pistol and a shield that was meant to stop low-level ammunition, and was not meant "to go up against a rifle."
"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."
Plyter told the court in testimony that shortly after the responding officers got through the front entry, he saw a body come out into the aisle ahead of us — the person on the other end was the shooter, who began firing his rifle at the officers, and the officers returned fire as glass fell on top of them.
Eventually, a SWAT Team came to the store and Plyter along with another officer met with them, clearing a certain amount of aisles from the back of the store, where the shooter was believed to be.
Plyter was then excused from the stand as there was no cross examination from the defense.
Michael Dougherty, one of the prosecutors in the case, then called the next witness of the day — Jenny Schmeits, another officer with the Boulder Police Department who was working with a field training officer named DJ Smith.
Schmeits told the courtroom she and Smith arrived to the King Soopers at Table Mesa and saw people yelling and screaming before entering the store, where they encountered gunfire and took cover as glass started falling from above.
"We needed to stop the threat, we needed to stop the killing, and at the same time, when I was being shot at I just felt like maybe I wasn’t going to make it home that day," Schmeits said, as she recalled learning Officer Talley had been killed. "I knew it was an officer because he had a uniform, within our contact group I heard one of our officers say, 'It’s Talley, he’s down.'"
At some point, Schmeits said she helped cover two officers moving through the store as they searched for the shooter and helped other victims coming out of the store and onto a safe place. Many of those coming out of the store were loaded onto an RTD bus to help them leave the area.
There was no cross examination from the defense, so Schmeits was excused from the stand.
The court then went to morning recess.
After the morning recess, prosecutors called Civil Deputy Jeff Brunkow with the Boulder County Sheriff's Office.
He recalled running up to the ramp of the store and said he remembered dispatch advised there were "possibly two to three shooters." At the scene, Brunkow remembers a short pause in the shooting after hearing gunshots and seeing glass everywhere.
As officers went inside, "a shot went through the glass" and Brunkow said Officer Braun went down and he said he saw blood all over his face. As they got him out of there and to an ambulance, Brunkow was concerned he wasn't going home that day.
A few minutes later, he saw a SWAT Team come into and eventually the shooter being brought out in only his boxers and blood coming off his leg.
Brunkow also testified he walked up to the King Soopers on Table Mesa and saw officers were bringing Officer Talley out from the store, adding that about half a dozen people surrounded the body and covered him with a U.S. flag that they took from a fire truck and surrounded him so no pictures could be taken.
He was dismissed from the stand after the defense waived cross examination.
DA Dougherty announced the next witness to be called to the stand was Officer Richard "DJ" Smith, a retired officer from the Boulder Police Department currently employed with Xcel Emergency.
"This was a real event," Smith said after hearing a few seconds of the call on the radio as he and another officer were driving to the scene of the shooting. "This was a real event, be prepared," he remembers thinking.
At the scene, they found two victims on the ground and joined the stack of officers as they went inside the store, remembering how "eerily quiet" it was inside — something they had not been prepared for during their training.
The next thing he remembers is glass from doors above him exploding and flying everywhere, which meant officers were taking fire in their direction. That's when he said the entire group of officers inside the store went back into the vestibule area — what he referred to as a position of safety to regroup, regather, and determine what they would do next.
Smith told the courtroom that after officers determined what to do next, he found himself backed up behind a couple of patrol cars and was talking to Officer Capobianco, who he helped get to a safer spot.
He was dismissed from the stand and no cross examination was performed by the defense.
Prosecutors then called the next witness — Boulder Officer Alexander Kicera — who told the court he was working on a report at police department headquarters when he heard the call of the shooting at the King Soopers on Table Mesa.
At the scene, officers described to him that there could be multiple shooters on the scene and that at least one of the shooters was wearing some sort of tactical or ballistic vest.
As he made his way from the parking lot to the inside of the store, Kicera described how he saw a couple of the victims on the ground before entering the store and seeing a police officer "with significant amount of blood… around the officer and his head."
Kicera described what other officers who've taken the stand said previously — there was no sound coming from inside the store as they slowly started moving in as they tried to locate the shooter. He then described how he then heard gunshots and started to hear glass breaking, thinking they were in a vulnerable position inside the store as it was in such an open area.
Kicera, along with fellow officers, then moved back to the vestibule and later helped move victims from outside the store.
He was excused from the stand after the defense waived their right to cross examine him.
Next on the stand was Samuel Kilburn, a firefighter with the City of Boulder who was working as a park ranger with the city on the day of the shooting at the King Soopers.
He remembered that on the day of the shooting, dispatch was relaying information about "multiple shooters (and) possible bombs in the parking lot" with multiple victims dead.
Kilburn told the court that as officers responded to the store, no one knew where the shooter was and remembered shots ringing out and being "showered with glass" from above. He also said he knew his face was covered in glass and so was everyone else's who was responding to the scene. Hearing gunfire shortly afterward, he remembered it was a "lot louder than I would have anticipated."
He then recalled how several officers moved toward the back of the store to help people fleeing the shooting 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.
After bringing people to safety, Kilburn remembered going onto the roof of the King Soopers where a Denver SWAT Team was at the time, and he stayed there for several hours covering a door that led to the exterior of the south side of the store.
Kilburn recalled coming down from the roof much later in the day, hours after arriving to the scene. He told the courtroom that after coming down from the roof, he wandered around the parking lot pretty aimlessly.
"Looking back, I was pretty broken at that point," he said.
Kilburn was released after the defense denied the opportunity to cross examine him on the stand.
Court then went to lunch break.
Watch Denver7's previous coverage of the Boulder King Soopers shooting in the video playlist above.
After lunch, prosecutors called Boulder Police Department Officer Michael West, who was working patrol the day of the shooting.
He, like other officers who testified Tuesday, described seeing victims laying on the ground, assuming they were dead. Moments later, he hears gunfire and West, along with other officers, backed up and moved to the vestibule to determine what to do next.
West testified that the "only way to stop the threat is to confront the person, one way or another."
At that point, he described seeing a person step out into view down the aisle and just a split second later, officers started taking a second round of gunfire. West said he tried to shoot back but his gun wasn't working. He said he had forgotten to put a round in the chamber.
At some point, he testified that there was a police officer down inside the King Soopers. He was later told it was Officer Talley.
The defense did not proceed with a cross examination and West was excused from the bench.
Following West's testimony, prosecutors called Brandon Braun, a sergeant with CU's Police Department.
He described arriving to the scene of the shooting and seeing various officers lined up outside the King Soopers on Table Mesa, as well as a lot of people observing outside and looking very confused. At that moment, he said he started yelling at them to get inside and take cover.
As Braun made his way inside the store, he was told by other officers to "watch left" and very shortly, Braun said he was under fire.
He told the courtroom he believed he heard two rounds, and believed the second one went just by him, with glass falling onto his face, eyes and mouth. He said he couldn't see, hear out of his left ear and had to backtrack since he couldn't see or hear.
After exiting the store, Braun was informed no one was covering the back of the store, so he and other officers ran to the back and as they did, they heard more gunshots. After arriving to the back of the store, he said he pointed his rifle "in a high manner" at that door in order to "engage the threat" in case the shooter came outside.
He also testified he helped get people out of the store and to a safe location where they'd be pat down and checked for injuries. The customers were "very distraught, fearful, and unsettled."
"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 Tuesday afternoon.
Braun was excused from the stand since the defense did not proceed with a cross examination.
The next witness to be called to the stand was Richard Steidell, an officer with the Boulder Police Department.
Steidell was the officer who shot the defendant that day.
Steidell was covering the southeast part of the city when he heard the call of the active shooter at King Soopers that day. He remembered thinking that grocery store was a "soft target" — no armed people, lots of customers and employees.
He realized the call was not a training exercise when he heard the voice of Officer Gignac over the radio.
After arriving at the scene, Steidell remembered drawing his handgun and running up to the grocery story. As he entered the story, he saw victims on the ground who appeared to be dead. He testified that officers are trained to run by these victims initially because they’re trained to "take care of a threat and stop the dying, and then they can treat the victims afterward."
Steidell said they had no initial plan going and his experience with the Coast Guard helped the team during what he described as a "high stress, adrenaline"-filled situation.
After getting everyone to move into the store, Steidell said he immediately noticed there was an officer down about 20 to 30 feet away, but he didn't know who it was. Someone else told him it was Officer Talley.
The officers decided to move into the store and extract Talley because at that moment there was no sound coming from inside the store.
"The quiet (atmosphere) definitely affected our tactics on entering the building and not knowing where the suspect was that was doing all this," Steidell said.
As they approached Talley, Steidell said he saw a gunman quickly emerge and remembered hearing gunshots, glass behind him blowing up and firing one or two shots before immediately hitting the ground into a prone position.
Steidell said he saw the shooter emerge again and shot between five to 10 rounds down the aisle and fired back, but didn't think he hit the shooter.
After waiting for what "felt like forever," he later learned a shot hit the shooter.
“Emotionally, once everything died down… I immediately went back to the command post where everyone regrouped,” he told court Tuesday, adding he gave Officer Plyter a big hug and broke down.
The defense did not do a cross examination and Steidell was excused from the stand.
The next witness was Sgt. Larry Ottosen, a traffic sergeant with the City and County of Broomfield.
He said he was in Broomfield when the call for the shooting came in and saw cop cars driving along US 36 as officers made their way to the scene of the crime. Describing the threat level as "very intense... the highest threat level I've been in," said Ottosen.
At some point, a fellow officer shouted at someone to show them his hands. The person coming toward them had his hands in the air and was wearing only underwear. The person was the shooter, who was ordered to go on the ground.
Ottosen said the defendant "wasn't talking to himself, or speaking to someone who wasn’t there, (and) wasn’t fixated on innocuous objects at all." He told the courtroom the shooter never asked who they were or what they were doing there. He was then handcuffed.
Ottosen testified he followed a blood trail from where the shooter turned himself in to the northwest corner of the store by the pharmacy. There — in aisle 21 — he found green clothing, a semi-automatic rifle, a handgun, and body armor.
As they canvassed the store, Ottosen said officers found about six people hiding in the pharmacy and three others in another side of the store.
Prosecutors then called Angela Peacock, a King Soopers employee who's been there for 25 years.
The day of the shooting, she was at a self-checkout and recalled hearing popping in the background that sounded "like they were dropping pallets... because of course, you never think that this kind of thing would happen."
She then recalled someone yelling "There's a gunman!" and said the shooter was walking probably eight feet away from her.
Peacock said the shooter appeared “focused” at that moment in time and that when he walked past her, he was looking straight ahead and looked "very" determined.
She told the courtroom she ran toward the back of the store and remembered only hearing gunshots once she was on the floor of a trailer. While on the ground and within the back of a semi that was near the store, she said she could hear the pops as the shooter walked around. While there, she texted her husband and let him know she was OK, so far.
Describing the sound of gunshots, she said, "It was like one or two shots at a time, and then silence, and then more," hoping the shooter wasn't heading toward the back room.
She told the court she had no idea how long she was inside that trailer, but eventually saw officers talking who told her and the others to get down before all of those hiding were ushered out the store.
In cross examination, the defense questioned her recollection as to where the shooter was the moment she started hearing popping sounds, as photos presented in court do not show the shooter anywhere near her as she is checking out items.
Peacock answered that she distinctively remembered seeing the shooter and his gun and knew the shooter came very close to her and didn't shoot. She responded that he "wasn't spraying bullets everywhere."
Court will continue Wednesday with the jury hearing about evidence collected at the scene of the shooting.
