A now-removed Facebook profile is shedding more light on the Colorado shooting suspect, 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa.
A high school classmate, and Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa’s brother Ali Aliwi Alissa, confirmed to CNN the Facebook page’s authenticity. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to CNN the company had removed Facebook and Instagram accounts belonging to the suspect.
In a number of Facebook posts, the shooting suspect made homophobic remarks and in two posts, even used anti-gay slurs.
He also claimed to believe that his former high school had been hacking into his phone.
“Just curious what are the laws about phone privacy because I believe my old school (a west) was hacking my phone,” the suspect wrote in a March 18, 2019 Facebook post.
He made a second post on July 5, 2019, also claiming that “racist islamophobic people” were hacking his phone, saying, “let me have a normal life I probably could.”
When questioned about it by his Facebook friends about how he believed that the school was hacking his phone, Alissa responded, “I believe part racism for sure. But I also believe someone spread rumors about me which are false and maybe that set it off.”
The profile claims that Alissa attended Arvada West High School; Jefferson County Public Schools spokesperson Cameron Bell confirms he was a student there from March 2015 until he graduated in May 2018.
Bell did not immediately respond with a comment on Alissa’s Facebook post.
That post comes in light of what his brother also told CNN, namely that he believes the suspect may have suffered from mental illness and that around 2014, Alissa felt he was being followed and chased and became increasingly “paranoid.”
At one point, his brother remembers Alissa even placed duct-tape over the camera on his computer to block anyone he believed to be following him, he said.
“He always suspected someone was behind him, someone was chasing him,” Ali Alissa said. “We kept a close eye on him when he was in high school. He would say, ‘someone is chasing me, someone is investigating me,’ and we’re like, ‘come on man, there’s nothing.’ … He was just closing into himself.”
Alissa also posted videos of him purportedly wrestling in high school. He occasionally made posts about his Muslim faith.
“Born in Syria 1999 came to the USA in 2002,” Alissa wrote in his profile description. “I like wrestling and informational documentaries.”
In 2015, like many Facebook users, he changed his profile picture to the French flag in the wake of the terrorist attacks at a musical venue in Paris. He also shared a post from another Facebook user about Islamophobia in the aftermath of the April 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shootings.
“The Muslims at the #christchurch mosque were not the victims of a single shooter,” the shared post read. “They were the victims of the entire Islamophobia industry that villified [sic] them.”
