The shooting Monday at a King Soopers in south Boulder appears to be the deadliest in Boulder County history and among the deadliest in the state, according to local historians and Camera archives.
The Boulder Police Department confirmed 10 people, including Boulder Police Officer Eric Talley, were killed in the shooting that was first reported about 3 p.m. at the grocery store at 3600 Table Mesa Drive. The shooting in Boulder comes six days after multiple shootings at massage businesses in Atlanta killed eight people, including six Asian American women.
There is no legal or universal definition for the term “mass shooting,” and different national databases that track shooting data define it differently. Several databases define a mass shooting as three or more shooting victims, not just fatalities, and the FBI defines “mass murder” as three or more murders occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders.
Boulder County has seen crimes that fit those definitions in its recent history, including the murders of Wallace White, Kelly Sloat-White and Emory Fraker on April 13, 2017, at the Whites’ home in Coal Creek Canyon. Garrett Coughlin was convicted of three counts of felony first-degree murder and one count of aggravated robbery in the shooting. The Colorado Court of Appeals is considering the case after Boulder District Judge Judith LeBuda overturned Coughlin’s earlier conviction because of jury misconduct.
Local historians and Camera columnists Silvia Pettem and Carol Taylor recalled the murders of Boulder Stove & Flooring owners Sean and Staci Griffin in 2010, who were killed by employee Robert Montgomery, who then killed himself. And in 1990, Christopher Schilling and James Dockus were killed and three others injured in a shooting at a target practice area in Lefthand Canyon. Escaped convict Michael Bell pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and attempted murder in that and other cases.
In Colorado, recent mass shootings include the STEM School shooting in Highlands Ranch in 2018, which killed Kendrick Castillo and wounded eight others. Shooter Alec McKinney pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and other charges in July, and the trial for Devon Erickson has been delayed because of the pandemic.
A shooting at a Thornton Walmart in 2017 killed Victor Vasquez, Carlos Moreno and Pamela Marques. Scott Ostrem pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder.
Colorado was rocked by the shooting at the Century Aurora 16 movie theater in July 2012, when a shooter opened fire during a midnight movie premiere, killing 12 people and wounding at least 70 others; and the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, when two students killed 12 of their classmates and a teacher.
Nationally, recent mass shootings at grocery stores include a December 2019 shooting at a kosher market in Jersey City, N.J., that killed four people and injured three, and a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019 in which 22 people died and 26 people were injured.
