BOULDER, Colo. (NewsNation Now) — King Soopers hosted a reopening ceremony nearly one year after an active shooter took 10 lives at the Boulder, Colorado, store.
It has been 11 months since the store was last open, and the company wants to mark the reopening by honoring the lives lost on March 22, 2021.
A company spokesperson said the ceremony’s purpose would be to “remember the lives that will never be forgotten and embrace the strength and resilience of the community.”
The ceremony gathered King Soopers associates and the community to reopen the Table Mesa location.
“When they see ‘Table Mesa’ they’ll know that this store did not get torn down and the shooter didn’t prevail,” said Margie Whittington, a mother of one of the victims.
But Robert Olds, uncle of another victim, thinks it may have been better to tear the store down, getting rid of the place where so much tragedy happened.
“What happened is still there,” Olds said of the shooting.
Olds hopes the newly designed store has better security than at the time of the shooting. He would also like to see supermarkets install panic buttons that alert police and automatically lock store doors, like schools have, and to also monitor their security cameras for signs of trouble, including outside the store.
He wasn’t impressed after touring the new store this week, saying “it was the same place it was.”
In March, 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa allegedly open fire, killing 10 people with an assault weapon court documents show he purchased less than a week earlier.
He was charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder in the mass shooting. He also faces one charge of criminal attempt for murder in the first degree.
A judge ruled that the man charged in the killings is mentally incompetent to stand trial and ordered him to be treated at the state mental hospital to see if he can be made well enough to face prosecution.
The victims in the attack ranged in age from 20 to 65. Among them is Officer Eric Talley, an 11-year veteran of the Boulder Police force who was among law enforcement from throughout the Denver area who responded to the attack.
The Associated Press and NewsNation affiliate KDVR contributed to this report.