Father of Colorado supermarket gunman thought he could be possessed by an evil spirit

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — The father of a mentally ill man who killed 10 people at a Colorado supermarket testified Tuesday at his murder trial that he thought his son may have been possessed by an evil spirit before the attack.

Sometime before the attack in Boulder in 2021, Moustafa Alissa recalled waking up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and his son, Ahmad Alissa, telling him to go talk to a man who was in his room. Moustafa Alissa said they walked together to his son’s room and there was no one there.

Moustafa Alissa also said his son would sometimes talk to himself and broke a car key fob he feared was being used to track him, echoing testimony on Monday from his wife. He said he didn’t know exactly what was wrong with his son but that in his native Syria people say someone acting that way is believed to be possessed by an evil spirit, or djin.

“We thought he probably was just possessed by a spirit or something,” Moustafa Alissa said through an Arabic interpreter in court.

Ahmad Alissa was diagnosed after the shooting with a severe case of schizophrenia and only was deemed mentally competent to stand trial last year after a doctor put him on the strongest antipsychotic medication available. No one disputes he was the gunman at the supermarket but he has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

<bsp-list-loadmore data-module="" class=«PageListStandardB» data-gtm-region=«RELATED COVERAGE» data-gtm-topic=«No Value» data-show-loadmore=«true»