Live Updates: Suspect Charged With 10 Counts of Murder in Boulder, Colo., Shooting
The authorities in Boulder, Colo., on Tuesday identified the 10 victims of the grocery store shooting. They included a police officer, a young grocery store worker and a retiree who was at the King Soopers picking up groceries for an Instacart delivery.
Among the victims was Officer Eric Talley, 51, with the Boulder Police Department, who had responded to a “barrage” of 911 calls about the shooting. Authorities identified the nine other people who were killed as Denny Strong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jody Waters, 65.
Here is what we know about the victims so far.
‘Brought life to the family’
Rikki Olds, a 25-year-old who loved the outdoors, was a front-end manager at King Soopers, where she had worked for about seven or eight years, her uncle, Robert Olds, said in an interview.
Ms. Olds was an energetic, bubbly and “happy-go-lucky” young woman who “brought life to the family,” her uncle said. She had persevered, despite hardship, he said. She was the oldest of three siblings, and her mother had abandoned her when she was just seven years old — dropping her off at the doorstep of her grandparents, who raised her in Lafayette, Colo.
Mr. Olds described his niece as a strong and independent woman who enjoyed hiking and camping. She liked spending time with friends and family and often accompanied him and her cousins to their baseball games.
The whole family is in shock, particularly Ms. Olds’ grandmother, Mr. Olds said. “My mom was her mom,” he said. “My mom raised her.”
A veteran police officer
Eric Talley, an 11-year veteran of the Boulder Police Department, was described as “heroic” by Chief Maris Herold at a news conference at the scene of the shooting on Monday night.
“He was the first on the scene, and he was fatally shot,” Chief Herold said, holding back tears. “My heart goes out to the victims of this incident.”
“The world lost a great soul,” said Officer Talley’s father, Homer Talley. “He was a devoted father — seven kids. The youngest was 7 and the oldest was 20, and his family was the joy of his life.”
Officer Talley was born in Houston and raised in Albuquerque. He joined the police force as a second career when he was 40, quitting a job in cloud communications, his father said in an interview on Tuesday morning.
“He wanted to be a servant,” Mr. Talley said. “He wanted to serve people. And you know, all kids want to be a policeman, and in many ways, he was a big kid.”
A former magazine photo director
Lynn Murray, 62, a former photo director and mother of two, was at the grocery store on Monday filling an Instacart order, which she had enjoyed doing to help people since her retirement.
Ms. Murray was former photo director for several New York City magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and Glamour, her husband said. The couple moved from New York in 2002, first to Stuart, Fla., then to Colorado, to raise their children.
“I just want her to be remembered as just as this amazing, amazing comet spending 62 years flying across the sky,” said her husband, John Mackenzie. She is also survived by two children: Olivia and Pierce.
Susan Campbell Beachy and Jack Begg contributed research.
Maggie Montoya was in the pharmacy distributing coronavirus vaccine shots when the first gunshot cut through the busy aisles of the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colo.
“Active shooter!” screamed a store manager who had been lined up for her own vaccination, and everyone scattered, Ms. Montoya, 25, recalled on Tuesday morning.
One person waiting in line for a vaccination was shot dead, Ms. Montoya said, and she and her co-workers raced for cover in back rooms behind the pharmacy counter. Ms. Montoya and another co-worker, huddled in what the pharmacy team calls the counseling room, dialed 911.
But as gunshots boomed just outside the door, Ms. Montoya decided she had a more urgent call to make. “I hung up and called my parents instead,” she said. “I wanted to hear their voice, for them to hear my voice in case it was the last time. I just told them I loved them and I had to go.”
Ms. Montoya heard the shooter yelling something indistinct as she hid in the counseling room, then the blare of a police loudspeaker as officers ordered him to surrender. Ms. Montoya recalls him saying, “I surrender. I’m naked.”
As they waited to be rescued, she got on the phone with her boyfriend, and he narrated the chaotic scene outside — officers rushing to the building, SWAT units descending on the roof.
Eventually, the police cleared the supermarket of threats and led Ms. Montoya and her colleagues through the bloody aisles and out of the building, urging them to avert their eyes.
But not far from the cash registers at the entrance, Ms. Montoya said she recognized the body of a co-worker, a head clerk who had regularly visited the stressed-out pharmacy workers throughout the pandemic to check in. Her co-worker, whom she declined to name, had just gotten vaccinated and was excited about plans to get a new tattoo.
A professional runner, Ms. Montoya had moved to Boulder for its active running scene and world-class trails. But on Tuesday, her father was flying into Colorado to help her gather some things and leave so she could be with her family. She said she spent the past hours replaying again and again the bloodshed she saw inside the store.
“Just reliving,” she said.
The city of Boulder enacted bans on assault-style weapons and large-capacity magazines in 2018 following the school shooting in Parkland, Fla. But a state district court judge ruled this month that Boulder could not enforce the bans.
It was not known Monday night whether any weapons covered by the bans were involved in the shooting at the King Soopers grocery store.
Judge Andrew Hartman ruled that under a state law passed in 2003, cities and counties are barred from adopting restrictions on firearms that are otherwise legal under state and federal law, The Denver Post reported. Gun advocates made that argument when they sued to overturn the Boulder bans shortly after they were adopted.
The judge rejected the city’s arguments that the home-rule provisions of the state constitution gave it the power to adopt the bans as a matter of local concern, and that they were necessary because the state did not regulate such weapons. As of last week, lawyers for the city had not said whether they planned to appeal.
An assault weapons ban in Denver was allowed to stand by the Colorado Supreme Court in 2006. But the circumstances were somewhat different. Among other things, Denver’s ban, unlike Boulder’s, had already been on the books for years when the 2003 state law was passed.
An appeals court found that Denver had the right to adopt reasonable gun regulations despite that law. When the decision was appealed, the State Supreme Court deadlocked 3-3 with one recusal. That left the appellate decision, and the Denver ban, in place, but it did not set a binding precedent for other cases.
Boulder’s ban is also being challenged in federal court on constitutional grounds.
The shooting at a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., that left 10 people dead came after a year in which the pandemic made supermarkets a dangerous place for employees, who risked falling ill with the coronavirus and often had to confront combative customers who refused to wear masks.
“They’ve experienced the worst of the worst,” said Kim Cordova, who represents more than 25,000 grocery and other workers in Colorado and Wyoming — including those at the King Sooper store that was attacked — as the president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7.
At least 853 grocery store employees in Colorado have had the virus during the pandemic, according to outbreak data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The state does not list any infections at the store that was the site of the shooting, but Ms. Cordova said that all grocery store employees had risked their safety when they came to work and were confronted by hostile shoppers.
“They’ve seen horrible behavior by customers — spitting on them, slapping them, refusing to wear masks — but they were the first to be heroes,” Ms. Cordova said.
The union, U.F.C.W., which also represents meatpacking employees and other workers, said in a statement that at least four of its members in Colorado had died of Covid-19 since the pandemic began, and that at least 155 grocery workers across the country have died.
Ms. Cordova said her union had pushed for more security in grocery stores as customers grew more aggressive. And while she cautioned that it was not yet clear what the motive of the gunman was, she said grocery store workers have increasingly come under threat on the job since the pandemic began.
“We have seen this behavior become more aggressive and violent,” she said, “and this has really traumatized these employees.”
A decorative star overlooking Boulder, Colo., on Flagstaff Mountain that is a fixture during the holiday season was lit on Monday night in honor of the 10 victims of the shooting at the King Soopers grocery store.
The Boulder Chamber, an organization that supports local businesses, announced the action on Twitter, saying, “We simply unite in our shared grief for the tragic taking of life from such a violent act and we send our heartfelt condolences to the families who have lost loved ones.”
Mayor Sam Weaver of Boulder urged residents to look at the star “in hope of a future in which these horrific events are a distant memory. And let us commit to making such a future a reality.”
The chamber said the star has marked every holiday season in the city for more than 70 years. It was first lit in 1947 and has shone out of season a year ago in support of efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Over the years, the star’s lights have been reconfigured for different occasions, including a No. 1 when the University of Colorado won a national championship in 1990 and a peace sign in the 1960s, according to 9News.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, confronted with the mass shootings of 18 people in two states within the span of a week, will hold a hearing on the problem of gun violence on Tuesday morning as advocates of regulation raise a plea for Congress to act.
Only hours after the shooting in Boulder, Colo., on Monday night, signs of a familiar partisan divide on guns began to appear. Some Democrats called for action, including the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who said, “This Senate must and will move forward on legislation to help stop the epidemic of gun violence.”
Some Republicans, including Representative Lauren Boebert, who made supporting gun owners’ rights a key part of her agenda while running for office in Colorado, expressed sympathy for the victims. “May God be with us as we make sense of this senseless violence, and may we unify and not divide during this time,” she said.
Advocacy groups quickly responded. The group Everytown for Gun Safety said the shooting in Boulder was at least the 246th mass shooting in the United States since January 2009, and that on average 805 people die by gun violence in Colorado every year.
“This is yet another in a long string of horrific tragedies, from Boulder today to Atlanta last week to the dozens more people in the United States who are shot every day,” said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, in a statement. “To save lives and end these senseless killings, we need more than thoughts and prayers — we need federal action on gun safety from the Senate and the administration.”
Gabrielle Giffords, the former representative from Arizona who was shot a decade ago, wrote on Twitter: “It’s been 10 years and countless communities have faced something similar. This is not normal.” She added, “It’s beyond time for our leaders to take action.”
A representative of her group, the Giffords Law Center To Prevent Gun Violence, was to speak at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, on a witness list that includes a fellow from the conservative group Heritage Foundation and the police chief of Waterbury, Conn., among others.
President Biden had been briefed on the shooting in Boulder and would be kept apprised of any further developments, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, tweeted on Monday.
In 2019, two national surveys found that vast majorities of Americans — Democrats and Republicans, men and women — support stricter gun laws. Polls also found that gun violence was beginning to scare people: a third of Americans reported that fear of a mass shooting stops them from going to certain public places, according to one survey by the American Psychological Association. Sixty percent said they were worried about a mass shooting in their community. Despite the broad support for action such as stricter background checks, Republicans in Congress have historically resisted attempts to regulate guns, and the issue has repeatedly fallen on lawmakers’ agendas.
The National Rifle Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its last tweet, at 8 p.m. Monday night, hours after the shooting, repeated the text of the second amendment.
Neil Vigdor, Will Wright and
Senators quickly splintered along partisan lines over gun control measures on Tuesday as Democrats demanded action in the wake of two mass shootings in the past week and Republicans denounced their calls, highlighting the political divide that has fueled a decades-long cycle of inaction on gun violence.
At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee that was scheduled before shootings in Atlanta and Boulder that left at least 18 people dead, Democrats argued that the latest carnage left Congress no choice but to enact stricter policies. They lamented the grim pattern of anguish and outrage followed by partisanship and paralysis had become the norm following mass shootings.
“In addition to a moment of silence, I would like to ask for a moment of action,” said Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and the chairman of the committee. “A moment of real caring. A moment when we don’t allow others to do what we need to do. Prayer leaders have their important place in this, but we are Senate leaders. What are we doing?”
Even before the recent shootings, Democrats had already begun advancing stricter gun control measures that face long odds in the 50-50 Senate. House Democrats passed two bills this month aimed at expanding and strengthening background checks for gun buyers, by applying them to all gun buyers and extending the time the F.B.I. has to vet those flagged by the national instant check system.
But the twin pieces of legislation passed in the House have been deemed too expansive by most Republicans — only eight House Republicans voted to advance the universal background check legislation. The bills would almost certainly not muster the 60 votes needed to clear a filibuster in the Senate.
Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the panel, said in his opening remarks that he was hopeful Democrats and Republicans could work together to make “bipartisan, common-sense” progress on gun control. But he said that the House-passed legislation did not fit that bill, since the measures passed almost entirely along party lines.
“That is not a good sign that all voices and all perspectives are being considered,” Mr. Grassley said.
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, went further, lashing out at Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who said that Republicans had offered “fig leaves” rather than actionable, significant solutions to gun control.
“Every time there’s a shooting, we play this ridiculous theater where this committee gets together and proposes a bunch of laws that would do nothing to stop these murders,” Mr. Cruz said. “But what they propose — not only does it not reduce crime, it makes it worse.”
The renewed focus on gun control is expected to cast attention back on Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who opposes dismantling the legislative filibuster but has long labored — fruitlessly — to pass a bipartisan gun control proposal. Following the 2012 shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Mr. Manchin brokered a deal with Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, to close legal loopholes that allow people who purchase firearms at gun shows or on the internet to avoid background checks, but proponents were unable to pick up enough support to pass it.
Mr. Manchin told CQ Roll Call earlier this month that he opposed the House-passed universal background check bill, citing its provision requiring checks for sales between private citizens, but said he was interested in reviving the Manchin-Toomey legislation.
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