BOULDER, Colo. – Two days after the Boulder shooting massacre, there is still no definitive answer to the crucial question: Why?
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21, was born in Syria but grew up in a Denver suburb, Arvada, about 20 miles from the Boulder, Colorado crime scene.
In 2017, Alissa was arrested for assaulting a fellow high school student. The attack was characterized as unexpected. Alissa received community service instead of jail time.
Now, the same man, four years later, is in custody, charged with 10 counts of murder and scheduled to appear in court Thursday,
According to the charging document in the supermarket shooting, a female family member noticed, two days before the attack, that he was playing with a gun she likened to a “machine gun”.
It appears that Alissa had recently purchased that weapon, a Ruger AR-556, lawfully, less than a week before the attack.
Alissa’s social media accounts, which now appear to have been stripped from public view, show a man who may have bouts of paranoia, at one point believing his school may have tapped his phone, but do not appear to illustrate plotting or allegiance to any specific violent cause.
