A witness to Monday’s mass shooting in Boulder, which left ten people dead, including a veteran police officer, told a local news outlet that the gunman shouted to officers, “I surrender, I’m naked,” about 30 minutes after the first shot was fired.
Maggie Montoya, a 25-year-old pharmacy technician at the store, told Colorado Public Radio that her manager yelled that there was an active shooter in the store, and she ran to a small room with a heavy metal door for safety. She claimed that the majority of shots were fired in the first ten minutes. “Then the store just got really quiet,” she explained.
She told CPR that she heard the Boulder Police Department make an announcement over a loudspeaker. The gunman was told that the building was surrounded. She said the gunman responded, “I surrender, I’m naked.”
Montoya said it took about 20 minutes before police entered the building to take him into custody. She said it seemed that police may have entered the store through the ceiling. It seemed that the gunman was still “by the pharmacy when they told him to surrender. And he again said, ‘I surrender, I’m naked,’” she said.
Police identified Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa as that shooting suspect. They said the 21-year-old purchased that weapon that he used in the shooting six days before the attack. He was booked into the county jail early Tuesday on murder charges after a brief stop at the hospital. Alissa had been struck by a bullet that passed through his leg, the affidavit said.
Supermarket employees told investigators that Alissa shot a man multiple times outside the Boulder grocery store before going inside, according to the affidavit. Another person was found shot in a vehicle next to a car registered to the suspect’s brother.
