Boulder gunman, Ahmad Alissa murdered 10 people inside a Boulder supermarket just one week ago in Colorado. After getting injured during a police shootout, he was then taken to hospital where he is recovering and waiting to be put on trial afterwards.
According to his brother, Alissa was paranoid since his childhood and was post anti-Trump material online, living life as a loner.
Interestingly, it turns out that Alissa was also a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner who competed. As seen in the photo, he is wearing two NAGA medals around his neck, so he knew how to grapple. This image below, from Smoothcomp shows that he competed as a lightweight in the NAGA Colorado Championship in 2019. He won the match on points and fought under Carlson Gracie.
Obviously, he is not representative of the BJJ community. However, the same community often prides itself on tackling mental illness. Often, it is said that BJJ can help fight depression and offer mindfulness and community. Sadly this wasn’t the case for Ahmad Alissa.
