Mohamed Sabry Soliman told the female detective that he left in solitude that Sunday to commit his attack, leaving behind an iPhone hidden in a desk drawer with messages to his wife and their five children, and a journal, in their Colorado Springs area duplex.

He drove away alone that June 1 morning from his home in the 2300 block of Washoe Circle in the Cimarron Hills neighborhood. He planned to exact  vengeance on a small group of peaceful marchers some 100 miles away in Boulder. He had come to associate them with terrible events many thousands of miles away in Gaza, authorities would later say. 

A day after the attack, he was in custody, with all the trappings of what looked like a normal family life left behind. There was the cream-colored flat-roofed townhome, with the blue bicycle adorned with Spiderman insignias still standing in the xeriscape yard of rock, the small plastic toddler’s tricycle, a light blue toy car. A large, wheeled trash bin remained next to the front door, waiting for the trip to the curb so many regularly make.

Soliman left all that and more behind for his rampage of gasoline and fire made on a clear blue day along the pedestrian Pearl Street Mall, a communal, red-bricked touchstone in Boulder. It’s a place usually popularized by pets out with their owners, musicians, couples strolling, others sipping an  espresso or noshing on an ice cream cone, while seated on a park bench near bright flower beds and hanging baskets.

In the days after his June 1 attack, reporters with The Denver Gazette and The Gazette in Colorado Springs interviewed witnesses, survivors and neighbors of the suspect. They also pored over police records, social media accounts, as well as statements by Homeland Security officials and Boulder law enforcement officials and reviewed video taken at the scene to compile this account of how the attack unfolded.

The attacker hurled his incendiary devices into a group of faithful Jewish demonstrators engaging in their weekly Run for Their Lives march in solidarity for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

In a video posted on the social media platform X during the attack, the 45-year-old Soliman is seen shirtless, wearing dark sunglasses and pacing back and forth, holding his homemade Molotov cocktails, the wine carafe bottles filled with gasoline, red rags hanging from the end. He is captured shouting, “How many children killed?” and then, “End Zionist.”

Video taken by a witness of the incident showed Soliman throwing two Molotov cocktails into the group of peaceful demonstrators. He caught himself on fire, causing him to tear off his shirt. Flames and smoke billow. People are seen fleeing the chaos, screaming in fear.

Hours before the attack, Soliman recorded messages while driving in a car. The video was posted by a group supportive of Hamas. In the two-minute video, Soliman talks about his allegiance to God while speaking in Arabic, declaring “God is greater” than “Zionists” and “America.”

“Why this humiliation and degradation that we live?” he continues in the recording, which he appears to have filmed himself.

“God is more worthy of our fear,” he says.

In all, 15 people were injured by his attack, ranging in age from 25 to 88, and one dog. All are expected to recover and survive. Those injured included Barbara Steinmetz, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor.

She appeared to still be rattled two days after the attack during a brief interview with NBC News.

“It’s about what the hell is going on in our country,” Steinmetz said. “What the hell is going on?”

She called for a return to kindness and civility.

“We’re Americans,” she said. “We are better than this. That’s what I want them to know. That they be kind and decent human beings.”

A war thousands of miles away has now touched the lives of those in Boulder.

That war started when Hamas stormed across the border into Israeli communities and killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 people into captivity in Gaza, according to the American Jewish Committee. A Reuters report, citing Palestinian health authorities, said Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 50,000 people.

II

Soliman, after the attack, speaking from a hospital bed, where he was being treated for his own burns, described to a detective how he hoped that everyone he attacked would die, and that he also had planned on dying and had sprayed gasoline on himself.

“He said he had to do it, he should do it, and he would not forgive himself if he did not do it,” the detective stated.

“Mohamed described his hopes for everyone in the Zionist group to die,” a detective later recalled.

Now, Soliman faces 118 criminal charges in Boulder District Court, ranging from attempted first-degree murder to use of incendiary devices, and a hate crime charge in U.S. district court.

He told a Boulder police detective that he never told his family of his plans. He’d been planning for more than a year, he confessed. He’d taken concealed carry shooting classes, but he said those plans changed when he was denied a gun purchase because he was not a citizen. He attempted to buy a handgun at Scheels All Sports, located 15 miles from where he was living, on Nov. 22, 2024 but was denied and never appealed.

Instead, he switched up his tactics and researched methodically on YouTube to learn how to make Molotov cocktails, how to use the gasoline, how to light them and how to hurl them to inflict damage. He said he kept it all secret from his wife and five children.

He planned the attack to occur after his oldest daughter graduated from high school. He wanted his daughter, Habiba, the Arabic word for beloved, to have her day of celebration before his day of burning flesh.

III

Soliman was born in Egypt and lived in Kuwait for 17 years before moving to Colorado. In a Facebook account, Soliman said he attended high school and college in Egypt and later moved to Kuwait, where he had an accounting job.

Mohamed Soliman entered the United States in August 2022 as a non-immigrant visitor and in 2023 received a two-year work authorization that expired in March. Soliman and his family filed for asylum in September 2022.

His daughter graduated from Thomas MacLaren School in Colorado Springs three days before her father’s attack. She earned academic honors each year at MacLaren and was the recipient of the Highlander Award for Leadership Involvement and a Best and Brightest Scholarship sponsored by Gazette Charities.

In a previous interview with The Gazette about her scholarship, Habiba, now 18, said she was inspired to pursue a career in medicine after watching the “magic” of a surgery that allowed her father to walk again.

“Coming to the USA has fundamentally changed me,” she wrote in her application for the scholarship. “I learned to adapt to new things even if it was hard. I learned to work under pressure and improve rapidly in a very short amount of time. Most importantly, I came to appreciate that family is the unchanging support.”

A 13-year-old neighbor said Soliman’s children were friendly and “super respectful,” always using “yes, sir” and “yes, ma’am,” when speaking to elders. He recalled that one of Soliman’s sons was a fan of Ohio State University sports team while he was a Michigan fan.

“Everything seemed normal,” he said.

Now, the daughter along with her four siblings — all minors — and their mother are at a federal detention center in Texas, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials process them for removal from the United States. A lawyer for the family has filed documents seeking to block their removal.

Soliman drove away alone from his family the Sunday of his attack in his silver Toyota Prius — the one he used to pick up passengers as an Uber driver. A regional bomb squad later found cans of gasoline, rags and a Quran in the vehicle. Soliman told the detective he knew the Jewish demonstrators gathered at 1 p.m. from researching social media accounts, and that he arrived at about 12:55 p.m. that Sunday and waited for them.

Federal and Boulder law enforcement authorities said that, on his way to Boulder, Soliman stopped to fill eight wine carafe bottles he bought from Target with gas and placed his homemade Molotov cocktails in a black storage bin. To hide his intentions, he dressed like a gardener, donning an orange vest and buying flowers from a Home Depot in Castle Rock.

He purchased a lawn backpack sprayer that he filled with gas and strapped to his back as he approached the group. Evidence techs later found 18 separate incendiary devices. He said he sprayed himself with gasoline in a failed attempt to kill himself. He confessed to a Boulder police detective to hurling two of his homemade Molotov cocktails at the Jewish demonstrators.

The first 911 call came in at 1:26 p.m. on Sunday. Soliman was in custody by 1:31 p.m.

The first fire unit arrived at 1:31 p.m. Medical helicopters and the first fire engine with paramedics arrived on the scene at 1:32 p.m., and first ambulance arrived at 1:33 pm.

IV

Aaron Brooks was riding his bike Sunday afternoon when he heard screams for help come from around the corner of the Boulder courthouse.

What Brooks encountered next is something that he said will stay with him forever.

“I hear somebody yelling, ‘Is anybody a doctor, is anybody a doctor?’” he recalled.

He thought someone at one of the restaurants was having a heart attack. Then, he saw a friend running from the area of the courthouse, yelling, “’Is there a doctor?’ And I get the mental map to realize: Did something happen to our group?”

Brooks walks every week with “Run for Their Lives,” advocating for the release of hostages in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and he witnessed the group being attacked as it was happening.

“I saw smoke on the ground, flames coming from the ground, smoke literally coming from a human being … there was blood. It was horrific.”

He said the Run for Their Lives group meets on a weekly basis and its size varies. Brooks said he often acts as a watchful eye during the walk in case anything happens. He said he didn’t participate in the walk the day of the attack but decided at the last minute to take a bike ride over there anyway.

“I got a weird feeling,” he added.

Before he knew it, Brooks found himself in the middle of de-escalating the situation before watching authorities arrest Soliman. He recalled yelling at the suspect, “What are you doing? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I lost it,” Brooks said. “I was angry, sad, and wanted to protect my community, all at the same time.”

V

After Soliman’s arrest, law enforcement authorities converged at his family’s home in the Colorado Springs area Cimarron Hills neighborhood. They saw his wife, Hayem El Gamal, leaving the home to go to the Colorado Springs Police Department. She brought with her the iPhone 14 that Soliman had left in a desk drawer with messages for the family to find.

Mohamed Soliman faced a federal judge in Denver Friday over his charge of a hate crime. He could be seen in court with scarring on the right side of his head. The bandage visible from an earlier booking photo was gone. He did not show any signs of distress or emotion, nodding and saying “yes” and “I understand” in Arabic, as the judge asked if he knew his rights and understood the charges against him.

This Sunday, the Boulder chapter of Run for Their Lives plans to walk Pearl Street again. Once again, in solidarity, they will reclaim Pearl Street.

“But what now?” said one of the victims, Mark, as he spoke at a vigil held at the Boulder Jewish Community Center on Wednesday.

“We’re walking again,” was his answer. “I’m looking to walk on Sunday.”