A staff member who witnessed the mass shooting that left 10 dead in a Colorado grocery store spoke out about the moment the siege ended.
Maggie Montoya, 25, who works as a pharmaceutical technician at the King Soopers in addition to being a professional runner, said she was first warned about the active shooter when her manager yelled, “Active shooter,” and everyone “scattered.”
Montoya and a co-worker fled into a small room normally used for pharmacists to administer the vaccine.
10 PEOPLE DEAD AFTER COLORADO SUPERMARKET SHOOTING
“I was just imagining the person hopping the counter and just coming in the room,” she told Colorado Public Radio, adding that she called 911, her parents, and texted her boyfriend.
“I told them what was happening, told them I loved them and that I needed to go but I’d text them,” Montoya said of her parents.
“There an [sic] active shooter in the store. I love you. Don’t call,” the 2:39 p.m. message to her boyfriend, Jordan Carpenter, said. She reached out to her co-worker’s husband because the pharmacist didn’t have her phone.
Montoya received updates from her running coach about the situation. He was outside the store and watching a widely circulated YouTube livestream.
“He told me that the building was surrounded, but no one was coming in, and all I’m thinking is, ‘Why aren’t they coming in?’” Montoya said.
Shortly thereafter, an officer said through the store loudspeaker: “This is the Boulder Police Department. The entire building is surrounded. I need you to surrender now.”
The shooter, who has been identified as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21, responded, “I surrender, I’m naked,” she said.
There was no immediate response, but five minutes later, the officer got back on the loudspeaker, demanding Alissa surrender.
It wasn’t until another 20 minutes passed before law enforcement entered the building, Montoya said.
The shooter “was still by the pharmacy when they told him to surrender,” Montoya said. “And he again said, ‘I surrender, I’m naked.’”
Montoya said she could hear law enforcement officers who said they had found a gun and ammunition “in the aisle there by the pharmacy.”
When law enforcement officers rescued them, “That’s when it all hit me, that I was going to be OK. That was probably the most emotional moment I had — that and leaving the store. It’s just that we were really getting out alive,” she said, adding the thought was that “the right people came through the door.”
As Montoya left her hiding spot, she saw a young co-worker who had been killed.
“I didn’t mean to see it — but we all loved them. She was always so nice to us, and she was my age,” she continued, her voice breaking. “I think with where she was in the store, almost all of us saw her.”
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Alissa has been charged with ten counts of first-degree murder. He was shot in the thigh and was hospitalized upon his apprehension. The police have yet to release a motive behind Alissa’s attack, however, accounts from people who know him, including his brother, describe him as paranoid with a fear of being targeted because of his Muslim faith, and his social media history appears to support that.
The victims of the shooting were identified as: Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; police officer Eric Talley, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jody Waters, 65.
