Ahmad Alissa: Boulder shooting suspect had temper ‘like a demon’ but mostly was a 'good guy', say ex-classmates
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, who has been arrested for carrying out a mass shooting at King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado on March 22, was described by his former classmates to have a violent temper that would explode “like a demon."
Dayton Marvel, one of Alissa's former wrestling teammates at Arvada West High School from where the Syrian-born accused mass murderer graduated in 2018, told Denver Post, "He was kind of scary to be around. His senior year, during the wrestle-offs, to see who makes varsity, he actually lost his match and quit the team and yelled out in the wrestling room that he was, like, going to kill everybody. Nobody believed him. We were just all kind of freaked out by it, but nobody did anything about it. He was a pretty cool kid until something made him mad, and then whatever made him mad, he went over the edge — way too far."
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According to details obtained by Colorado Sun, Jeffco Public Schools has a record of Alissa attending Arvada West High School between March 2015 and May 2018. Another teammate, Angel Hernandez, told the publication that he once watched Alissa get into a fight with someone who was “just teasing him.” He “just lost it. He started punching him,” Hernandez said. However, the former classmate also insisted that the accused killer was mostly “a good guy” who was “always so joyful and so nice.”
“But you could tell there was a dark side in him. If he did get ticked off about something, within a split second, it was like if something takes over, like a demon. He’d just unleash all his anger,” he said.
Alissa was also paranoid and voicing out his own fears and that of his family. Alissa “would talk about him being Muslim and how if anybody tried anything, he would file a hate crime and say they were making it up," Hernandez said. Another former classmate, Keaton Hyatt, said he took a weightlifting class with Alissa and never knew him to be violent. Hyatt rather praised Alissa’s quick wit and sharp comebacks during locker room chats. “He was super cool and super funny,” Hyatt said. “… It was never violent jokes about people or America or anything."
We previously reported that Alissa was sentenced to probation and 48 hours of community service in 2017, after attacking his high school classmate. In 2017, Alissa walked up to a classmate and “cold-cocked” him in the head. When the individual fell to the floor, Alissa got on top of him and punched him several more times, in the head. It is unclear who the victim was in the case. It was unclear why Alissa attacked the individual, but documents show that the victim had made fun of Alissa and called him racial names weeks earlier. The assault resulted in several bruises and cuts. When tried, Alissa pleaded guilty to third-degree assault and was sentenced to probation and 48 hours of community service as a result.
The same year, Alissa was ticketed for traffic infractions and pleaded guilty to "violating a driver’s license restriction". It is unclear what restriction he violated, as no more information could be obtained. The Denver Post reported that "Arvada Police Detective Dave Snelling confirmed Tuesday the local department had at least two interactions with Alissa over the past several years, including a case of criminal mischief. The details of that case were not immediately available."