Johnathan Walker:Daughter finds ‘earth angel’ in woman who made her dad laugh before Colorado supermarket shooting

DENVER (AP) — In the moments before a gunman leaned on Johnathan Walkera car to steady his aim at her father, killing him as well as nine others during a 2021 mass shooting at a Colorado supermarket, a fellow shopper loading her groceries next to Erika Mahoney’s dad made him laugh when she teased him about his automatic door closing button.

When the story was retold by Jenny Jacobsen during a trial that ended this week with the shooter found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, it provided Erika Mahoney with some solace during a difficult two weeks focused on what happened that day in the college town of Boulder.

The thought of her father, Kevin Mahoney, having one final moment of joy has provided Erika Mahoney some peace of mind ever since Jacobsen first reached out last year to share the story. It has also led to a bond with Jacobsen, who she calls her “earth angel.”

Erika Mahoney said the story sounded exactly like her father, a retired hotel development executive, who loved everyone and appreciated a good joke.

“What more could you wish for, that before the most horrific thing, there was laughter and a moment of peace,” she said.

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It is one of several bonds Erika Mahoney, a journalist and mother of two, has formed with people impacted by the shooting that have comforted her and provided answers about what happened to her father. Those ties deepened during the trial, which she also faced with the support of all the victims’ families, a tight-knit group after many court delays.

“This tragedy proves how connected we all are,” she said. ”We have to find a way to love another more.”

Since the night of the shooting, she has thought a lack of love could be to blame for it.

“I wish the young man behind the gun had received more love in his life because maybe this wouldn’t have happened,” she told the judge during Ahmad Alissa’s sentencing.

Erika Mahoney, 34, became a “soul sister” to another young woman who lost her mother in the shooting: Olivia Mackenzie. Her mother, Lynn Murray, was working as an Instacart shopper when she was killed at a checkout stand. Her father later died of a heart attack, which she believes was caused by the shooting. They bonded the year after the shooting when they met at a coffee shop and both jumped when a loud car passed by, which helped Erika Mahoney realize it was a sign of the trauma she had been suffering.

During this month’s trial, they went to a yoga class filled with mostly older people. Erika Mahoney said it felt like being in a room with parents.

“We felt so loved and connected to each other,” Mackenzie, 28, said.

During the trial, Erika Mahoney got to see her father’s last terrifying moments for the first time. Before, she had thought that maybe he was shot without knowing what was happening. But in court she saw surveillance video of her father, her protector, running from the gunman in the parking lot, trying to get back to the store. He finally fell in the main driveway leading to the store.

Shaken by the image, she stayed home from court the next day but watched online as witnesses testified, including police officer Richard Steidell, who ended the attack by shooting and wounding the gunman.

Steidell’s testimony provided another bit of comfort for Erika Mahoney: He told jurors that he later moved Kevin Mahoney’s body out of the parking lot so it would not be run over by an armored vehicle being brought in to help protect police before Alissa eventually surrendered.

Erika Mahoney had previously believed that her father’s body was left where it had fallen, alone, for hours in the aftermath of the shooting and investigation. Hating the idea, she said she had sometimes imagined herself being on the ground with her father, holding his hand, to reimagine how he died.

She got Steidell’s number and reached out by text to thank him.

“It’s funny the things we become grateful for,” she wrote.

Steidell said seeing and moving the bodies of Mahoney and a woman shot near the entrance was something he had struggled with after the shooting. So her gratitude provided consolation to him too.

“It helped me tremendously,” he said.

During the trial, Jacobsen explained what led to that final laugh with Kevin Mahoney in March 2021, when social distancing measures were still in place because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said she had been absentmindedly following him too close as they left the store, so she apologized and he smiled. She gave him more space but then realized they were parked next to each other.

They smiled at each other and put their groceries in the trunk at the same time. After Kevin Mahoney hit a button that beeped to close his trunk, Jacobsen teased him by saying “Ooh, fancy,” causing him to laugh loudly, throwing his head back, before he left to return his shopping cart. Seconds later he would be dead.

She also shared on the stand how she crouched underneath her steering wheel to hide after hearing the shooting begin. She jumped at each shot, she said, and her body shook, fearing she would be shot. She thought about her daughter. When she finally looked out her window, she said she made brief eye contact with Alissa and then saw him focus on and shoot the woman near the entrance, Tralona Bartkowiak, before going inside its sliding doors.

“The only thing that separated us that day is that he had a cart and I didn’t have a cart,” she said later.

Jacobsen said she thinks Erika Mahoney will be in her life forever now.

“I could tell her that story every day if she wanted me to,” she said.

Erika Mahoney said it broke her heart to hear Jacobsen thinking about her daughter as she hid. Jacobsen’s experience also made her think again about her father’s final moments, in light of the fatal chase of her father seen on the video. She now believes her father was also thinking about his family in his final moments.

“He fought hard to live,” she said. “He had some time to think about life.”