Victims of Boulder grocery store massacre are identified

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A 61-year-old father who walked his journalist daughter down the aisle last year, three store workers and a ‘heroic’ police officer are among the 10 victims who were gunned down in the Boulder grocery store massacre. 

The victims were shot dead at the King Soopers outlet in Boulder on Monday afternoon when the gunman, since identified by police as 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, opened fire.

Those killed include: Rikki Olds, 25, Teri Leiker, 51, Denny Stong, 20, Neven Stanisic, 23, Tralona Bartkowiak, 49, Suzanne Fountain, 59, Kevin Mahoney, 61, Lynn Murray, 62, and Jody Waters, 65.  

Boulder Police officer Eric Talley, 51, was also among those killed after he responded to the shooting. 

California-based reporter Erika Mahoney posted a touching tribute to her father Kevin as she revealed he was among the victims of the massacre.  

‘I am heartbroken to announce that my Dad, my hero, Kevin Mahoney, was killed in the King Soopers shooting in my hometown of Boulder, CO,’ she wrote alongside photo of him walking her down the aisle at her wedding last year in May. 

‘My dad represents all things Love. I’m so thankful he could walk me down the aisle last summer. Thank you to the Boulder PD for being so kind through this painful tragedy.’  

Olds, who worked at the store as an assistant front-end manager throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, had been employed there since graduating high school.  

The young woman’s family shared several tributes on social media as the grieving relatives called for the gunman to ‘burn in hell’.

‘We lost our beloved Rikki Olds to the monster who shot up the king soopers in Boulder CO yesterday may his rotten a** fry and burn in hell,’ her aunt Lori Olds said. 

Leiker, whose boyfriend also worked at the store but survived, had worked there for 30 years.  

Leiker’s friend, Lexi Knutson, said the veteran employee loved working at the store. 

‘She loved going to work and enjoyed everything about being there,’ Knutson told Reuters. 

‘Her boyfriend and her had been good friends and began dating in the fall of 2019. He was working yesterday too. He is alive.’ 

Knuston said she believed Leiker’s job had come through a special needs work program.  

Friends said Stong, who was the youngest victim, was training to be a pilot.

‘My heart breaks. My son’s best friend, Denny Stong was killed at the Boulder King Soopers yesterday. He was 21 and was training to become a pilot,’ Laura Cole Spicer wrote in a Facebook tribute. 

Bartkowiak ran a clothing store in Boulder. 

The gunman first opened fire in the parking lot of the store before going inside where witnesses described him shooting at staff and shoppers. 

Survivors hid in food aisles and sheltered while trying to listen to which direction he was coming from, and if he was reloading what they described as an AR-15 rifle. 

Police, over radio scanners, told each other to take ‘head shots only’ after reports that he might have been wearing a tactical vest. The terror went on for around 20 minutes before he was taken into custody. 

Talley was among the first officers on the scene following reports of the active shooting. 

In the aftermath of the massacre, Talley’s father said the slain officer had been learning to become a drone operator so he could step away from the front line. 

‘He didn’t want to put his family through something like this,’ his father Homer Talley said. 

Talley is survived by his his wife and their seven children. Their youngest child is seven years old. 

‘He loved his kids and his family more than anything,’ his father said.  

Talley had been working as an officer for just over a decade after enrolling in the Aurora’s Police Training Academy when he was 40 years old. Talley, who had a master’s degree, had quit his stable IT job in 2010 after one of his close friends died in a DUI crash.