By Nate Powles

npowles@altoonamirror.com

It wasn’t until he got home and started looking over the hundreds of photos he had taken that the gravity of last week’s supermarket shooting in Colorado hit Adam Houser.

Houser, an Altoona native now living in Boulder, Colo., went to the King Soopers supermarket last Monday when he heard nonstop sirens passing his residence.

A photographer on the side, the Penn State Altoona graduate wanted to document the events. He did not register in the moment the enormity of what he witnessed at the market where 10 people were gunned down.

Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21, is facing 10 counts of first-degree murder in the shooting spree.

“When I was on scene, I was focused on what was going on and taking pictures,” he said. “I personally didn’t feel scared or overwhelmed with emotions at that point in time.”

The fact that his ex-girlfriend had been only minutes away from being either in the grocery store or at least in the parking lot when the shooting started impacted him most of all.

“All the what-ifs and the timing starts going through my mind. I didn’t break down in any way, but once you’re back home, you get lost in your thoughts for a little bit,” he said. “You start thinking about the loss of life and what’s going on just minutes down the road.”

Houser has returned to the scene to capture images of the memorials that have arisen following last Monday’s events.

Houser said police vehicles were in every possible spot they could squeeze into as they responded to the scene a week ago, and they took up both sides of the road leading to the shopping complex.

Houser parked in a nearby lot across the main road and stayed on the public sidewalk, taking up a post behind a tree to take pictures. He watched police start inspecting vehicles in the parking lot, and after searching one car in particular, they made Houser — along with the other photographers and media members near him — retreat farther back to clear the perimeter.

“At no point did I get in the way or disobey,” Houser said. “All the times officers passed behind me, I was never told to leave. I didn’t ignore any officer’s verbal commands. Whenever we were told to move, I moved.”

A former volunteer firefighter with the Logan Township Kittanning Trail department, Houser had run into several different dangerous situations without hesitation, feeding off his own personality traits, so he felt the experience at King Soopers was no different in the moment.

“I guess I’ve always been the person that runs toward danger instead of running away,” Houser said. “I definitely wasn’t enjoying my time. I wasn’t there to have fun, I wasn’t excited to be there in any way, shape or form. It was just down to business.”

Knowing that risk-taking side was no comfort to Houser’s mother, Marcia Graham, in the moment. Houser said he had texted her before he left for the scene and she didn’t see his message until later on and his phone had died quickly due to the cold, leaving him without any form of communication. Both his mother and his ex-girlfriend bombarded him with texts to no avail and he couldn’t return any of their calls or message until he got home.

“Needless to say, I was a bit upset and apprehensive when I could not get a hold of him,” Graham said. “I have been to Boulder several times, and Adam and I have shopped at that supermarket. So it’s like we weren’t there, but we were. It just hit a little too close to home.”

The son of a former Pennsylvania state trooper based in Huntingdon and Hollidaysburg, Houser has a deep admiration and respect for the police and used his photos to paint a picture of the coordinated response of several different departments. His father was the one who had fostered a love of photography in him from a young age by taking portraits and couple photos on the side.

Houser had moved progressively further west after graduating college, landing in the Lake Tahoe region and Santa Barbara, Calif., before settling in Boulder. He had taken several summer jobs along the way, including a position as a lifeguard in Tahoe for several years.

He had been working in the restaurant industry as a server in Boulder before the pandemic, but soon found himself in a position like many others across the nation and world.

“Once the pandemic hit, I was affected like many others in that industry at the time,” Houser said. “The week right before Thanksgiving, we got the word that our restaurant – our particular location – shut down, so I permanently lost my job.”

Since losing his job, Houser has turned to online sales and said that has helped him stay occupied and keep his head above water. Photography took an even bigger role in his life since the start of the pandemic.

The combination of his admiration for the police force and his love of capturing moments — both rooted in his relationship with his father — was what gave Houser the motivation to go to the scene of that now-infamous day.

Houser said no officer went without a job or stood by idly in responding to the Boulder shooting.

The sight with which he was greeted upon arriving down the road from the market was, in his words, “incredible.”

“I’ve seen tens, hundreds of police cars on TV before for other situations like this, but personally with my own eyes, I’ve never seen anything like that with that much personnel from all over the region; they came pouring in from everywhere,” Houser said.

Through it all, Houser said he simply wanted to archive this moment in history and he had no other motives in going down to the scene. He hoped that through his pictures, people would be able to experience the gravity of what happened that day and see how the police responded as quickly and effectively as he felt they did.

“I didn’t go down there for fame or anything like that, but in my mind, with photography and my history with law enforcement with my father, I just wanted to capture the scene and capture the response of the officers.”

Mirror Staff Writer and Copy Editor Nate Powles is at 814-946-7466.