Mental illness appears driver of Colorado shooter

Given the available evidence, it appears that this is a case similar to other mass shootings of a mentally ill individual who finally snapped.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

With history of aggressive behavior that sounds like undiagnosed mental illness, Colorado shooter Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21, appears to have been a timebomb waiting to explode.

Given the available evidence, it seems that this is a case similar to other mass shootings of a mentally ill individual who finally snapped.

What may separate this case is that usually there’s a history of the family trying to get their loved one treatment (usually without success given the onerous requirements for involuntary commitment in the U.S. mental health system).

Here, the family doesn’t seem to have intervened despite suspecting him of being ill. His brother told The Daily Beast that he believed his brother suffered from mental illness.

The fact that he was able to buy a Ruger AR-556 pistol on March 16, six days before the killing strongly suggests he was never committed as Federal law prohibits the ownership of weapons by people who are considered a danger to themselves or others.

Although there have been reports that Alissa acted out of Islamist motives, there’s no hard evidence yet linking his cold-blooded slaying of 10 people at a Boulder supermarket on Monday to Islamic beliefs.

Those reports are based on the fact that he is Muslim and was born in Syria, moving to the U.S. in 2002 at the age of 3, and that he was connected to someone under investigation by the FBI.

On his since-deleted Facebook profile, Vice reports “he shared a PBS article debunking myths about immigrants and called out the ‘industry of Islamophobia’ after the March 2019 shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, left more than 50 people dead.”

Alissa has been described as violent by some who knew him. Denver Post reporters say that Alissa was “violent, short-tempered and paranoid.”

A high school wrestling teammate, Dayton Marvel, said “He was kind of scary to be around.”

He even once threatened to kill everyone during a match.

“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,” Marvel said.

Alissa appeared to use the fact that he was a Muslim in a threatening manner.

“He 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,” Marvel said.

Alissa actually attacked someone in the school, leading to a guilty plea of misdemeanor assault when he repeatedly punched a fellow classmate in the head. The witnesses said there was no obvious reason for the attack.

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