Florida woman learns her sister was in Colorado supermarket during attack

Police ID Boulder shooting suspect amid calls for assault rifle ban

Police on Tuesday identified a 21-year-old man as the suspect who opened fire inside a crowded Colorado supermarket, and court documents showed that he purchased an assault rifle less than a week before the attack that killed 10 people, including a police officer.

3/23/2020 - Even though Boulder, Colorado is 1,800 miles away from Central Florida, the mass shooting that left 10 dead hits close to home for a Central Florida woman.

Stacy Kahn's sister was inside the King Soopers grocery store when the shooter opened fire. Khan said her sister initially thought something just fell off a shelf. But then she heard more shots ring out and that's when she and others ran to the closest safe space they could find.

"The closest thing was the meat-seafood department and she went behind their counter and went where they stock the food. A gentleman that was with them broke that safety door so they could get out the back and get to the loading dock," said Khan.

She said her sister and others made it to the pharmacy and hid there for hours before getting the all-clear.

SWAT officers carrying ballistic shields slowly approached the King Soopers store while others escorted frightened people away from the building.

Monday’s mid-afternoon attack was the seventh mass killing this year in the U.S., following the March 16 shooting that left eight people dead at three Atlanta-area massage businesses, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today, and Northeastern University.

It was the nation's deadliest mass shooting since a 2019 assault on a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where a gunman killed 22 people in a rampage that police said targeted Mexicans.

It follows a lull in mass killings during the pandemic in 2020, which had the smallest number of such attacks in more than a decade, according to the database, which tracks mass killings defined as four or more dead, not including the shooter.

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