Testimony begins in Colorado grocery store shooting trial
More than three difficult years later, the people who lived through the infamy of the mass murder at a Colorado King Soopers grocery store on March 22, 2021, dutifully recalled what happened in a Boulder courtroom Thursday. Seven people took the stand, the first to testify in the case against Ahmad Alissa for the killings of 10 people.
Prosecutor Michael Dougherty began to try to show that Ahmad Alissa had clarity of mission that day; that actions were planned, deliberate and intentional, while defense attorney Sam Dunn is hoping the jury will find Ahmad Alissa not guilty by reason of insanity.
"This guy was not just moving just shooting randomly, he was pointing and aiming," said Kevin Slay, one of the first witnesses for the prosecution.
Among the most disturbing stories was told by Dr. Allison Sheets, a former emergency room physician who has retired since the incident. Upon hearing loud noises she at first hid behind a cardboard cutout, then snaked her way into a shelf behind bags of potato chips where the yellow color may have camouflaged the yellow of the ski jacket she was wearing from a day of cross-country skiing with her common-law husband.
"I just hunkered in there as quietly and quickly as I could, I did look up seconds after I hid and saw the gunman walk past the aisle that I was in," said Sheets.
"What was he doing as he walked by?" asked Dougherty.
"He was hunting. He was looking down an aisle as he walked by," she said.
She heard a woman in the next aisle over get shot and die quickly, recognizing the sounds of the almost immediate exhalation of a person's last breath she knew from her time as a physician. A man crawled up the aisle where she hid looking for his own refuge and tried to climb into the potato chip shelf as well. She feared they both might be found.
"I was able to catch his eye, and I don't know how I motioned, but I didn't want him to continue to pull potato chips out because I thought that would make it obvious that someone had been there. And then when I caught his eye, he stopped what he was doing and went behind me to the south."
He found a spot among other potato chip bags and the two of them survived hidden there until police pulled them out.
Among the stories was one of what was clearly a selfless heroism by Starbucks attendant Logan Smith. At first he called 911 and spoke calmly providing an address. But then the shooting took over in a recoding played in court.
"I am able to deliver the address and that is all I'm able to deliver before the gunman had fired in my direction, which resulted in Rikki Olds collapsing to the ground," he said.
Fellow worker Rikki Olds was among the 10 killed. With Smith was a coworker named Helen.
"She was frozen in place and I knew that I wasn't going to leave. I wasn't going to leave her. I wasn't going to escape the store. I stayed with her the whole time and we buried ourselves behind the trash cans." There they hid inside the Starbucks kiosk. He looked at his watch and noted the time. Fifty two minutes later a police dog was in his face. They were safe.
Testimony continues Friday.
