Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa was arrested Tuesday after committing a brutal attack on the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Co that claimed the lives of 10 innocent Americans including one police officer who attempted to stop the shooter.
Far more important than the name or motivations of the criminal are the names of his victims: Officer Eric Talley, 51; Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jodi Waters, 65. These were innocent everyday Americans and a single Officer who died a hero running into the danger to protect them.
What We Know: The Truth About the Colorado Shooter
Across multiple different small to medium local and regional media outlets much more can be gathered than is being presented by the mainstream media. Here are some facts:
- Al Aliwi Alissa described himself as “born in Syria 1999 came to the USA in 2002. I like wrestling and informational documentaries that’s me.”
- He was believed to be prone to sudden outbursts of violent rage.
- He was a practicing Muslim who frequently posted about Islamic prayer and holidays.
- On social media he expressed fears of and even a possible obsession with “Islamophobia”. “Yeah if these racist Islamophobic people would stop hacking my phone and let me have a normal life I probably could,” he posted in July 2019.
- Shortly after the 2019 Christchurch shooting he shared a post from on Facebook that read “The Muslims at the #christchurch mosque were not the victims of a single shooter. They were the victims of the entire Islamophobia industry that vilified them.”
- According to court documents acquired by local outlet Fox31 KDVR “Shows Alissa had a run-in with the law in 2017 when he was accused of “cold cocking” a class mate at school. The victim, according to the records, fell to the floor after the suspect was accused of punching him in the head. The victim suffered bruising, swelling, and cuts to the head as well as pain, according to the records.”
- Al Aliwi Alissa was “convicted of misdemeanor assault in 2018 and sentenced to probation and community service for attacking a classmate the previous year, blaming racist abuse for the attack, court documents show” according to the Daily Beast
Angel Hernandez and Dayton Marvel, a high school teammate on the wrestling team told the Denver Post,
“Hernandez said Alissa frequently appeared to be paranoid about perceived slights against him, and Marvel said Alissa was often concerned about being targeted because of his Muslim faith.”
Marvel continued “He would talk about him being Muslim and how if anybody tried anything, he would file a hate crime and say they were making it up,” Hernandez also added, “Whenever you went up to him, he was always so joyful and so nice. But you could tell there was a dark side in him. If he did get ticked off about something, within a split second, it was like if something takes over, like a demon. He’d just unleash all his anger.”
A Mentally Ill Man? A Terrorist? Or Both?
“I wish I could stand here and promise that pain will heal quickly,” Colorado Governor Jared Polis told a Tuesday press conference. “But it won’t…. At times like this, it’s hard to see the light that shines through the darkness.”
“Not only did we lose ten lives, this is real horror and terror,” he added.
The governor was right, this truly was terror. In fact it was terrorism… of a sort.
Circumstantially, we can even theorize that this could qualify as Islamist terrorism. Al Aliwi Alissa based on several witness accounts was paranoid and saw what her termed as “islamophobia”, a popular social-justice leftist invention, everywhere he went. This is a common motivation for Islamist Jihadis. He also had a history of attacking classmates for perceived racist or anti-Islamic slights and justified every violent action as in response to persecution for his faith, reminiscent of the Charlie Hebdo attack in France where an Islamist shooter opened fire against a magazine that committed the sin of drawing a satire of the Islamic figure Mohammed.
Al Aliwi Alissa’s brother Ali was interviewed by the Daily Beast and said that his brother’s actions were “not at all a political statement, it’s mental illness.” adding “being chased, someone is behind him, someone is looking for him.” However, based upon his past behavior and witness accounts it doesn’t seem to be politics or mental illness alone but both.
Make no mistake Al Aliwi Alissa’s actions were evil, he is no doubt a very disturbed man and must be held accountable for his actions. But those actions were no doubt informed by the predominating national madness of victim mentality, identity politics, racial privilege and perceived oppression that “primed the pump” and doubtlessly fed his delusions of persecution.
