BOULDER, Colo. — Once again, the war in Gaza has come home to America.
A man using what police called a “makeshift flamethrower” launched a gruesome attack on demonstrators in Boulder on Sunday, raising questions about why security wasn’t stronger in the wake of an earlier attack in Washington, D.C.
Run for Their Lives, the organization behind the long-standing demonstration that advocated for the return of Israeli hostages, had anticipated that its members would have safety concerns.
The group offered principles to make the events safer, including “don’t protest,” “be polite and peaceful” and “don’t disturb your neighbors.”
“Focus on humanity,” the guidance on its website says. “This is about innocent children, women, the elderly, and other civilians being held by terrorists—not about the war.”
The Boulder chapter of Run for Their Lives has been holding regular demonstrations demanding that Hamas release the hostages seized during the terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Kyle and Elizabeth Shorter, who live in a Denver suburb and were taking their wedding pictures in Boulder when the attack happened, said the Run for Their Lives demonstrators had become fixtures on the street.
“Every time we’ve come up here the past couple of years, they’ve always been here,” said Elizabeth Shorter, 26. “They’ve never been aggressive or chanting, just simply walking.”
And that, an expert said, could make them harder to protect from a terrorist.
“Usually, there is a regular detail assigned to protect protesters,” said Brian Higgins, who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and runs a security consulting firm called Group 77. “But it’s not uncommon for a mindset to set in that, as time goes on and nothing out of the ordinary happens, that there’s no need to be on high alert.”
Higgins, who said he wasn’t aware of what security measures Boulder police had in place Sunday, was taken aback by video that showed the attacker threatening people before police intervened.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” Higgins said. “That raises questions for me about how much security there was at this protest.”
Police Chief Stephen Redfearn said his department is aware of events taking place later in the month and will plan to provide additional security coverage. “We want to ensure that people feel comfortable and safe in this community,” he told reporters on Monday.
Shira Weiss, global coordinator for Run for Their Lives, said that some chapters have long relied on protection from local police or private security but that it’s “really the individual group leader’s decision how and when they want to use security.”
And while some local chapters have paused to “recompose themselves and give themselves space to heal” after the Boulder attack, others have said, “We won’t stop; we’re going to be right back out there next week,” Weiss said.
“We obviously keep reiterating to our group leaders that safety is the No. 1 priority,” she said.
Although clearly frightened by what she witnessed, attack survivor Lisa Turnquist, 66, said she won’t be deterred from speaking out against Hamas and on behalf of the Israeli hostages.
“This is when we have to get up and we have to stand out and push back,” said Turnquist, who spoke to a reporter outside the historic Boulder County Courthouse, where the attack happened. “We just want the hostages home.”
A dozen people were injured Sunday, eight of whom remain hospitalized, authorities said. Initial calls to police reported people “being set on fire,” and officers found multiple victims with burns and other injuries, Boulder’s police chief told reporters.
Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, has been charged with attempted murder and a hate crime, among other offenses.
The attack happened just 11 days after two Israeli Embassy workers were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.
In both the Boulder and the Washington attacks, the attackers are alleged to have yelled the same thing: “Free Palestine.”
Security experts who spoke with NBC News questioned how the man in Boulder was able to allegedly launch such an attack downtown even amid heightened awareness after the Washington killings.
Higgins said his security clients include several major Jewish organizations. And ever since the killings of Israeli Embassy workers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim on May 22, they have been adding extra layers of security, he said.
“Given what’s going on out there and the agitation out there, my recommendation is that there should be an elevated level of security at all Gaza protests,” Higgins said.
Run for Their Lives has been holding regular demonstrations outside the county courthouse on Pearl Street since Hamas launched a bloody surprise attack on Israel and took 250 hostages. That spawned an Israeli invasion of Gaza that has left more than 54,000 people dead, many of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Michael Alcazar, a former hostage negotiator with the New York Police Department who also teaches at John Jay, said Pearl Street is a soft target for a terrorist attack. He said the attacker was able to approach the demonstrators because they didn’t appear to be protected.
“The police chief dropped the ball not having a uniform presence over there,” Alcazar said. “Is the police chief not aware of what’s going in the world?”
The Boulder Police Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Anti-Defamation League said it had been in contact with local law enforcement in Boulder.
“We feel at ADL like many across the country feel, which is just vulnerability and both sadness and anger at the violence that we’ve seen,” said Oren Segal, the Anti-Defamation League’s senior vice president for counterextremism and intelligence. “This is a wake-up call — not just for the Jewish community.”
The FBI also said in a statement that “our goal is always to get ahead of any threats.”
“We have long warned that lone actors or small groups of conspirators present a great challenge to law enforcement because there may not be a lot of clues about their intentions,” it said.
An affidavit alleged that Soliman, a married father of five, had been planning the attack for over a year and was waiting for one of his daughters to graduate before he set his alleged plan into motion. It didn’t specify where his daughter was graduating from.
Soliman told investigators during his arrest interview that he researched how to make Molotov cocktails on YouTube, according to the affidavit. It alleged that he was also unrepentant about the attack, saying he would do it again to stop Israel from taking over “our land,” referring to the Palestinian territories.
Elias Rodriguez, the Chicagoan charged with the deaths of Lischinsky and Milgrim, was also motivated by the Gaza war, authorities said. He told police when he was arrested, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” according to court records and published reports.
In his first comments since the attack, President Donald Trump condemned the “horrific” incident Monday on Truth Social. Earlier, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller sought to shift blame onto the Biden administration for allowing Soliman in the country.
“He was granted a tourist visa by the Biden Administration and then he illegally overstayed that visa,” Miller said Sunday on X. “In response, the Biden Administration gave him a work permit.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, amplified that on X, saying that Soliman “is illegally in our country” and that he applied for asylum in September 2022.
McLaughlin later told NBC News that Soliman’s asylum claim was pending and that while his visa had expired, he hadn’t yet exhausted all legal routes to stay in the United States.
Deon J. Hampton reported from Boulder, Alicia Victoria Lozano reported from Los Angeles and Elizabeth Chuck and Corky Siemaszko from New York City.
