A mentally ill person who murdered 10 people in a Colorado grocery store in 2021 has been sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. The jury refused to accept his plea of not guilty due to insanity.

The relatives of the victims described in painful detail the lives that gunman Ahmad Alissa had destroyed in 2021 in the college town of Boulder.

“We hope the person who did this suffers for the rest of their life.” “You are a coward”, said Nikolena, whose brother Neven was murdered. “I hope that this will haunt the defendant for the rest of his life.” “The defendant deserves to suffer the worst.”

Stanisic remembered going to get ice cream the night before her brother was killed and how sometimes he helped her pay bills. She told the court that their household, which was once full of laughter and talk, is now mostly quiet.

The defense attorneys didn’t dispute the fact that Alissa has schizophrenia and shot 10 people, including a policeman, to death. They argued that he was insane when he committed the crime and could not tell right from bad. He is the latest to fail to get acquitted due to insanity.

The jury also found Alissa guilty of 38 counts of attempted murder, and assault and six counts for possessing large-capacity illegal magazines.

The judge, Ingrid Bakke, sentenced him to a total of 10 consecutive life sentences without parole for his murders. He was also given an additional 1,334-year prison term for all other crimes.

“This wasn’t about mental illness.” “This was brutal, deliberate violence,” said District Attorney Michael Dougherty.

Alissa is now 25 and has declined to speak at his sentencing.

Alissa’s family and many police officers were in the courtroom. Alissa and her family members sat in the courtroom behind him.

Alissa began shooting as soon as he got out of his vehicle in the parking lot of a King Soopers in March 2021. He killed the majority of victims in less than a minute and then surrendered to an officer after he was shot in the leg.

The daughter of Officer Eric Talley, who was killed in the line of duty, lamented that they wouldn’t be able to share life milestones. Madeline Talley, however, said that she would not harbor bitterness towards Alissa and had forgiven her.

Madeline Talley, Madeline’s daughter, said that her father taught her to believe in God’s ability to bring good out of evil.

Others were not ready to forgive. Robert Olds, whose niece Rikki was killed, said Alissa’s family should be held criminally liable because of their “ignorance and inaction”.

Alissa didn’t react visibly when the verdict was announced. He looked occasionally at the relatives of victims as they spoke during sentencing. He sat with his back hunched, talking or writing to his lawyer.

Defense attorneys later declined comment.

The prosecution had to prove Alissa’s sanity. The prosecution argued that he did not fire at random and demonstrated a capacity to make decisions when he pursued people who tried to run and hide from him. He passed a man, 91 years old, twice who was unaware of the shooting.

He was armed with illegal magazines that could hold up to 30 rounds of ammunition and steel-piercing cartridges. Prosecutors said he did this because he wanted the attack to be as deadly as possible.

The jury asked to watch videos of Alissa executing the victims and obeying commands while he was being arrested. Later, a psychologist interviewed him.

Alissa’s family members, who had immigrated from Syria to the United States, said that he began to withdraw and speak less in the years leading up to the shooting. They said he began to act paranoid, showed signs of hearing voices and his condition worsened when he received COVID-19 at the end of 2020.

Alissa’s schizophrenia was diagnosed after the attack. Experts said that the behavior described by her relatives was consistent with the onset of schizophrenia.

Psychologists who evaluated Alissa determined that he was not insane at the time of the shooting. The defense didn’t have to present any expert testimony or evidence to prove that Alissa had a mental illness.

The state psychologists stated that Alissa was not delusional despite hearing voices. The state psychologists said Alissa’s fear of being jailed or murdered by the police showed he knew what he was doing.

Alissa told the psychologists repeatedly that he had heard voices before the shooting, including a “killing voice”. B. Thomas Gray, a forensic psychologist, testified that Alissa did not provide any more information about the voices during six hours of interviewing.

Insanity is not the same thing as mental illness. Insanity is defined by Colorado law as a mental illness so severe that a person cannot tell right from wrong.

The relatives of the victims were present at the two-week-long trial. They watched the graphic video footage and the body camera videos. Survivors gave testimony about their escapes and, in some cases, how they helped others reach safety.

The prosecutors did not give a motive for the shooting. Alissa first searched online for places in Boulder to attack, such as bars and restaurants. A day before the shooting, he focused on large stores.

He drove to Boulder from the Denver suburb of Arvada on the day of his attack. He fired three shots in the parking area before entering the supermarket.

She crawled on a shelf, hid in potato chip bags, and then climbed up. Alissa said, “This is Fun” at least 3 times while he was firing his semiautomatic pistol which resembled an AR-15 rifle.

Alissa’s mother testified in court that she believed her son to be “sick”. His father, however, said that he believed Alissa had been possessed by an evil spirit. He did not treat his son, as it would have disgraced the family.

Gov. Jared Polis stated in a press release that justice had been done. He said that “loved ones, neighbors, and friends were taken away from us by an act of pure evil.”