According to police records and witness statements, Boulder King Sooper mass shooting suspect Ahmad Al-Issa had a history of attacking classmates without warning and blaming the violence on his victim’s alleged racism and Islamophobia. A former teammate of Al Issa on the wrestling says the suspect threatened that “if anybody tried anything, he would file a hate crime and say they were making it up.”
The family of Al Issa have insisted to the media that the suspect is not politically radical and is in fact the victim of “bullying,” with brother Ali telling the Daily Beast his sibling’s reported violence was “not at all a political statement, it’s mental illness,” and “The guy used to get bullied a lot in high school, he was like an outgoing kid but after he went to high school and got bullied a lot, he started becoming anti-social.”
Witnesses and police records, however, tell a different story. As FOX 31 reported Tuesday, when Al Issa was 18 he sucker punched a classmate and then continued to strike the victim while the latter was on the ground. The victim suffered cuts, bruising, and swelling on the head but Al Issa only served 2 months in jail and 48 hours of community service for the assault.
Court records reveal that Al Issa justified the attack by claiming “had made fun of him and called him racial names weeks earlier,” though no classmates could corroborate his story.
Al Issa’s wrestling team classmate Dayton Marvel told the Denver Post that in Al Issa’s 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,” Marvel said.
“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,” the classmate continued.
As National File reported, before being scrubbed by Facebook Al Issa’s Facebook profile revealed that he was a devout Muslim who obsessed over perceived racism, echoed left-wing critiques of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, and expressed anti-gay sentiments.
Journalist Laura Loomer reported on her Telegram channel that a “source tells me shooter carried out attack in the name of ISIS.”