▶ Watch Video: Boulder mourns shooting victims as suspect is charged with murder
The man accused of opening fire at a King Soopers grocery store in Colorado last March and killing 10 people has been deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial for the time being, the Boulder County district attorney’s office told CBS News on Friday. Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa is facing 10 counts of first-degree murder and more than 20 counts of attempted murder, among other charges.
Four doctors have now determined that Alissa, who was 21 at the time of the shooting, is currently mentally incompetent to stand trial, the district attorney’s office said in a statement. The statement did not specify why Alissa was deemed to be incompetent, but said authorities are “confident that, with medication and treatment, the defendant’s competency will be restored.”
“Given that all the doctors are in agreement, holding a hearing on the defendant’s competency is unnecessary and would not be in the interest of justice or judicial efficiency,” the statement said. “Therefore, we did not request an additional hearing and requested that the defendant be transferred to the State Hospital in Pueblo, Colorado in order to restore his competency as soon as possible so that we may proceed forward with the case.”
Alissa is accused of fatally shooting 10 people, including multiple store employees and a police officer who responded to the scene, on March 22. Witnesses described complete chaos in the store at the time of the shooting, with customers and employees sprinting for safety when the first shots were fired.
“I heard one loud bang. I thought somebody just dropped something, an employee or something, and then another. And then by the third one, everybody was running,” one witness told “CBS Mornings” at the time. “At that point, it was just run, get out of there and tell everybody to leave. And that’s what we had to do.”
A memorial to the victims was established outside the store, which has not yet reopened.
