Mother of Colorado supermarket shooter says he is “sick” and denies knowing about the plan

BOULDER, Colorado. – The last time Khadija Ahidid saw her son in 2021, he came to breakfast with a “homeless” look and a big hairdo, so she offered him $20 to get a shave or haircut that same day. Hours later, he shot and killed 10 people in a supermarket in the college town of Boulder.

She saw Ahmad Alissa for the first time since then during his murder trial on Monday and said repeatedly that her son, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia after the shooting, was sick. When one of Alissa's lawyers, Kathryn Herold, introduced her to the jury, Herold asked how she knew Alissa. Ahidid replied, “How do I know him? He's sick,” she said through an Arabic interpreter in her first public comments about her son and the shooting.

Alissa, who emigrated from Syria with his family as a child, began behaving strangely in 2019. He believed he was being followed by the FBI, talked to himself and isolated himself from the rest of the family, Ahidid said. His condition worsened after he contracted Covid several months before the shooting, she said, adding he also became “fat” and stopped showering as often.

There was no record of Alissa being treated for mental illness before the shooting. After the shooting, his family later reported that he had been behaving strangely, such as breaking a car key and covering a laptop camera with tape because he thought the devices were being used to track him. Some relatives believed he might be possessed by an evil spirit or jinn, the defense said.

No one, including Alissa's lawyers, disputes that he was the shooter. Alissa has pleaded not guilty because he was insane. The defense says he should be found not guilty because he was insane at the time of the shooting and could not distinguish between right and wrong.

Prosecutors and forensic psychologists who examined him for the court say that although Alissa was mentally ill, he knew what he was doing when he launched the attack. They point to the planning and research he did to prepare, and his fear of ending up in prison afterward, to show that Alissa knew what he was doing was wrong.

Alissa looked down most of the time as his mother testified and the screen showed photos of him as a happy toddler and as a teenager on the beach. There was no obvious interaction between mother and son in the courtroom, but Alissa dabbed at his eyes with a tissue after she left.

The psychiatrist responsible for Alissa's treatment at the state mental hospital had previously testified that Alissa had not received any visitors during his more than two-year stay there.

When questioned by District Attorney Michael Dougherty, Ahidid said her son did not tell her what he was planning to do the day of the shooting.

She said she believes a large package Alissa brought home shortly before the shooting, which contained a rifle, may have been a piano.

“I swear to God, we didn't know what was in that package,” she said.

Dougherty stressed that she told investigators shortly after the shooting that she believed it might have been a violin.

After being reminded of an earlier statement to police, Ahidid admitted that she heard a banging noise in the house and that one of her other sons said Alissa had a gun that jammed. Alissa said he would return it, she testified.

She stated that no one from the extended family living together in the house had asked, saying: “Everyone has their own task.”

“Nobody is free for anyone,” she said.