The man accused of carrying out a deadly shooting in the US has faced numerous threats. Photo / AP
The man accused of carrying out a deadly shooting in the US has faced numerous threats. Photo / AP
The man accused of shooting dead 10 people in a massacre at a Colorado supermarket this week has been forced to move to a prison outside the city where the attack took place.
Ahmad Alissa, 21, has been receiving so many threats inside his Boulder prison cell that authorities decided to move him outside the county.
The news comes a day after the alleged mass killer appeared in court for the first time. The young man entered in a wheelchair due to a gunshot wound to the leg that he suffered in a firefight with police. He appeared alert and attentive, moving his knees from side to side, his eyes darting back and forth from his lawyers to Judge Thomas Mulvahill.
The Syrian-born, US citizen did not speak during the brief hearing except to say "yes" to a question from the judge, who advised him that he is charged with murder.
Alissa appeared uneasy in the courtroom, shifting his weight in the wheelchair as his lawyers asked for time to determine the extent of his mental instability.
He was held without bail but local media reporting suggests he would not be returned to the prison where he had initially been locked up.
Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty outlines the ongoing investigation into the mass shooting. Photo / AP
Alissa has been labelled "paranoid" and "anti-social" by his own family and had to be punished just a week before the shooting for bringing a machine gun into the house. He reportedly had the weapon confiscated by family members at the double-storey home in Arvada, northwest of the city of Denver.
It is believed they gave the weapon back before Alissa walked through the car park at the King Soopers grocery store in South Boulder, shooting dead a number of people before continuing his rampage inside the store. He has been charged with 10 counts of first degree murder. His victims include two people in their 20s and a 51-year-old police officer who was a father of seven children.
About 2,000 people gathered for a vigil Thursday night (US time) in the parking lot of a high school about 1.5km from the scene of the shooting. Many held candles and roses while locking arms or embracing at Fairview High School near the base of the snow-covered Rocky Mountain foothills.
After a singer led the crowd in "Amazing Grace," Nicole LiaBraaten, a local leader of the gun-control group Mums Demand Action, asked everyone to "take a healing breath".
Mourners hug at a vigil for the victims of the mass shooting. Photo / AP
Alissa was convicted in 2018 of assaulting a fellow high school student, according to police documents. A former classmate told the Associated Press he was kicked off the wrestling team after yelling he would kill everyone following a loss in a practice match.
Following the Al Noor mosque terrorist attack in Christchurch, Alissa called the dead "victims of the entire Islamophobia industry that vilified them".
"What Islam is really about," he wrote in one Facebook post that referred to a list of teachings from the Koran, is to "be good to others" and "restrain anger". In other posts, he urged followers to give to charity, described abortion as "disgusting" and said that he opposed gay marriage.
"There was no indication on his Facebook account that suggested radical views of any kind, whether it be Islamist, anti-Trump, or anything else," said Rita Katz, executive director of SITE, which analysed the postings. "He did mention Islam on his Facebook, but never to any extremity."
Alissa appeared uneasy in the courtroom as his lawyers asked for time to determine the extent of his mental instability. Photo / AP
Alissa's lawyer, public defender Kathryn Herold, has asked that he receive a mental health evaluation before the case against him proceeds. "Our position is we cannot do anything until we are able to fully assess Mr Alissa's mental illness," Herold said, adding that the defence cannot begin that assessment until it receives evidence from investigators.
A mentally ill defendant might eventually plead not guilty by reason of insanity, as gunman James Holmes did in the 2012 shooting at an Aurora movie theatre that left a dozen dead. It would be up to a jury to decide whether the defendant knew right from wrong at the time of the crime — the state's legal definition of insanity.
Boulder, Colorado shooting a wake-up call
After the latest mass shooting in the United States, President Joe Biden renewed calls for a ban on assault weapons.
On March 16, a gunman killed eight people at spas in the Atlanta, Georgia area. On Wednesday, a young man carrying six firearms, including an assault rifle and a shotgun, was arrested at a supermarket in a suburb of the city.
Two US mass shootings in a week have thrust back to the fore the nation's plague of gun violence, which worsened during the pandemic and may have been further fuelled by spiking firearm sales in 2020.
The two separate bursts of killing, on opposite sides of the country, claimed a total of 18 lives and confronted the nation anew with a painful problem that was obscured by the virus's out-of-control spread.
In the midst of the pandemic that has killed 545,000 in the United States — the world's worst absolute toll — cities around the country recorded worrying jumps in gun-related deaths last year.
