BOULDER, Colorado (AP) — A man who shot and killed 10 people in a mass murder at a supermarket was not crazy when he unleashed terror in a college town in Colorado, but a calculating killer who knew what he was doing was wrong, a prosecutor told jurors on Thursday in his opening statement, which was immediately disputed by the defense.

Years of legal disputes about the mental state of Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa during the March 2021 shooting are likely to continue throughout his three-week trial.

Alissa’s attorney argued that his client, who has been diagnosed with treatment-resistant schizophrenia, suffered from hallucinations in the run-up to the shooting at the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder – he heard screaming voices, saw people who weren’t there and believed he was being followed.

Alissa begged not guilty by reason of insanityNo one, not even Alissa’s lawyers, denies that he is the shooter.

“We’re not running from this. But if you’re going to point the finger at this guy, you deserve to know the truth about him. This man, Ahmad Alissa, is a sick human being,” his attorney Samuel Dunn said in his opening statement.

A prosecutor argued that Alissa was able to distinguish right from wrong and was therefore sane.

“The victims were random, but the murders were absolutely intentional and deliberate,” Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty told jurors.

Alissa sat in the courtroom next to his lawyers in a striped white shirt, sometimes turning in his chair to look at a video screen on which the lawyers presented evidence and bullet points of their arguments.

The victims’ relatives sat in the rows on the opposite side of the courtroom, occasionally dabbing their eyes and comforting each other.

Alissa is accused of 10 counts of murder, 15 counts of attempted murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting in Boulder, about 50 kilometers northwest of Denver.

Alissa’s motive, if he had one, remained unclear, and Dougherty did not suspect one. He argued that Alissa acted intentionally and with full knowledge of his wrongdoing.

Most of the people shot in and outside the store were dead within a little over a minute. Alissa targeted the fleeing people and made a special effort to finish off the injured with more shots, Dougherty emphasized.

“The shooter prepared to kill them, planned to kill them, and went and executed 10 people at King Soopers. That’s why you’re here,” Dougherty told the jury after showing photos of each victim and describing why each was at the store that day.

None of those shot survived. After shooting eight people, Alissa crept through the store – which had fallen silent except for the background music still blaring from the store’s speakers – and then discovered and killed 59-year-old Suzanne Fountain as she emerged from a hiding place in another aisle.

His final victim was Boulder police officer Eric Talley, a father of seven and one of the first three officers to enter the store.

Alissa surrendered to the other arriving police officers, voluntarily stripped down to his underwear and followed their instructions as they approached him and handcuffed him.

“There are no hallucinations, no delusions, no confusion,” Dougherty said of Alissa’s behavior.

Alissa’s lawyer described a series of hallucinations, delusions and social withdrawal that relatives said Alissa experienced before the shooting and which were later confirmed by psychiatrists.

The schizophrenia was so severe that it took years for him to see therapists and only then was he given a drug called clozapine, which, Dunn stressed, is only used when other treatments don’t work.

Before the shooting, Alissa had not received medical care because she was part of a Syrian immigrant family and her father believed the cause was possession by an evil spirit or jinn, Dunn said.

“I want you to imagine that in your ears, where you have no protection or place to retreat, you cannot identify the source: all you hear is screaming and yelling,” Dunn said. “That is what was transmitted into Ahmad Alissa’s head.”

One time, Alissa’s father woke up at 3 a.m. and his son, who was also awake, asked if he had seen a man in the bathroom. The father looked and no one was there, Dunn said.

“The law says you can be willfully insane. But the law does not allow you to ignore clear, unequivocal evidence of severe and chronic mental illness and claim that the person is sane and able to distinguish right from wrong,” Dunn said.

He urged the jury to “use their common sense, apply the law” and find Alissa insane.

If Alissa succeeds in pleading not guilty on the grounds of insanity, he could be spared a prison sentence and instead be committed to the state mental hospital indefinitely.

Among the prosecution witnesses who testified Thursday was Alison Sheets, an emergency room doctor who heard the gunshots while shopping and hid on the side of a potato chip shelf, where she heard more gunshots and someone in the next aisle taking their last breath – a sound she recognized from work.

“It was almost a sigh,” she said. Prosecutors said it was Fountain’s last breath.

A mental health expert testified during a 2022 competency hearing that Alissa said he bought firearms to carry out a mass shooting and implied he wanted to be killed by police.

According to court documents, relatives said he irrationally believed the FBI was following him and that he would talk to himself as if he were speaking to someone who was not present.

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Gruver reported from Cheyenne, Wyoming.