What We Know About the Victims of the Boulder, Colo. Attack

Fifteen people and a dog were injured after a man with a “makeshift flamethrower” threw an incendiary device into a crowd of protestors in a mall in Boulder, Colo., who were calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Four women and four men between the ages of 52 to 88 who were injured in the attack on June 1 were taken to Denver metro hospitals with injuries consistent with being set on fire, according to Boulder police. In total, authorities have identified 15 victims—eight women and seven men—ranging from 25 to 88 years old.

Officials have not released the names of the victims.

Barbara Steinmetz, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor who suffered burn injuries, told NBC News she and other members of Run for Our Lives, a weekly walk held in communities around the world to advocate for the release of hostages held by Hamas, were demonstrating peacefully before the attack.

What happened "has nothing to do with the Holocaust, it has to do with a human being that wants to burn other people," she told the outlet, adding, “It's about what the hell is going on in our country.”

"We’re Americans," she said when asked what she wanted Americans to know following the attack. "We are better than this. That’s what I want them to know. That they be kind and decent human beings."

Authorities arrested a suspect identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, of El Paso County, according to the Boulder Police Department. He has been charged with 118 state-level counts, including 28 counts of attempted murder. The Department of Justice has also charged him with a federal hate crime.

Soliman told police that he wanted to kill all Zionist people and could conduct another attack, according to an affidavit filed Monday. Plans for Sunday's attack had been in motion for a year, the affidavit said Soliman told authorities.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin identified Soliman as an undocumented immigrant who overstayed his tourism visa. He filed for asylum in September 2022 and remained after his visa expired in February 2023, McLaughlin said.

“The Colorado terrorist attack suspect, Mohamed Soliman, is illegally in our country,” McLaughlin told TIME in a statement.

The National Counterterrorism Center is working with the FBI and local authorities to investigate the incident as a “targeted act of terrorism,” according to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. The suspect yelled “Free Palestine” while throwing the incendiary device into the crowd, FBI Denver Special Agent in Charge Mark Michalek said Sunday evening. Authorities found 16 unused Molotov cocktails in the vicinity where Soliman was arrested, District Attorney Michael Dougherty said on Monday.

“What the charges allege that he did was to throw Molotov cocktails a group of men and women, some of them in their late 80s, burning them as they peacefully walked on a Sunday to draw attention to Israeli hostages held in Gaza,” Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado J. Bishop Grewell said at the Monday afternoon press conference. “When he was interviewed about the attack, he said he wanted them all to die. He had no regrets, and he would go back and do it again.”

What We Know About the Victims of the Colorado Attack

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