Colorado shooting suspect to make appearance in court on Thursday

Colorado mass shooting suspect will make its first court appearance on Thursday. According to authorities the suspect opened fire at a supermarket and killed 10 people, including a policeman.

Ahmad AL Aliwi Alissa is charged with 10 counts of murder and an attempted murder charge stemming from the rampage on Monday at King Soopers grocery store in the Table Mesa section of Boulder, some 28 miles northwest of Denver. He will appear in  Boulder court at 8.15 am, according to court records.

This was the second massacre in the country this week after March 16 incident where a gunman shot eight people to death at the Atlanta- area day spas.

After these attacks, President Joe Biden had called Congress to strengthen gun restrictions. Legislation to bolster background checks and ban certain semi-automatic rifles has stalled amid  Republican opposition.

The motive for which the suspect killed people has not yet clarified by police, his 34 -years -old brother described him as antisocial and paranoid, his sister-in-law also said that he had been ”playing with” a firearm she described as resembling a ”machine gun” two days earlier, upsetting family members, according to an arrest affidavit filed by police in the case.

According to the affidavit, the gunman arrived at the King Soopers store armed with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a handgun and wearing a tactical vest. it also says that the law enforcement database shows that six days earlier Alissa purchased a Ruger AR- 556 pistol, a weapon that resembles a semi-automatic rifle.

Alissa was also pleaded guilty to third-degree assault for punching a classmate in late 2017. The graduates from Arvada West High School in 2018, he is a naturalized U.S citizen from Syria.  According to police the crime which he committed in 2017 was because he was called ”terrorist” and was called by many racist names.

The 10 victims on Monday included Eric Tally, an 11-year  veteran of the Boulder police force who was among the first office on the scene. Tally 51 was a father of seven who had been looking for less dangerous work, according to his father.

In the history of the US Colorado has seen some of the most shocking episodes of gun violence, including the 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora and the 1999 rampage at Columbia High School, near Littleton.