BOULDER, Colo. — A man was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty Thursday to killing one person and injuring a dozen others in a 2025 firebombing attack on a demonstration in Boulder, Colorado, in support of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

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Mohamed Sabry Soliman looked down at a desk throughout the sentencing. He has meanwhile pleaded not guilty to federal hate crime charges for the attack last June. Prosecutors are weighing whether to seek the death penalty in the federal case, according to his attorneys.

Authorities say Soliman threw two Molotov cocktails at demonstrators at a pedestrian mall in downtown Boulder, a city of 100,000 people northwest of Denver that’s home to the University of Colorado.

Karen Diamond, 82, was injured in the attack and later died. A dozen others were also injured.

Soliman is an Egyptian national who federal authorities say was living in the U.S. illegally. Investigators allege he planned the attack for a year and was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people.”

Speaking to the court through an interpreter for nearly a half hour, Soliman offered apologies to the victims and condolences for Diamond’s death. “There are no words that can express my sadness for her passing,” Soliman said.

He said he wasn’t asking for leniency at sentencing for his convictions in state court and wants prosecutors pressing federal hate crime charges against him to seek the death penalty.

“If I went back, I would not have done this as this is not according to the teaching of Islam,” Soliman said. “What I did came out of myself and only myself.”

District Attorney Michael Dougherty said Soliman’s guilty pleas don’t show an acceptance of responsibility but rather “a surrender to the strength of the evidence” against him. Despite Soliman’s claims he doesn’t hate people who practice the Jewish faith, Judge Nancy Salomone concluded Soliman targeted the victims because they were Jewish. “You chose a time and a place and a set of circumstances and weapons that were designed to inflict the most pain that you could,” the judge said.

In a statement read earlier in court by a prosecutor, Diamond’s sons asked that Soliman not be allowed to see his family again “since he is responsible for our mother never seeing her family again.”

Andrew and Ethan Diamond said their mother suffered “indescribable pain” for over three weeks before her death. “In those weeks, we learned the full meaning of the expressions ‘living hell’ and ‘fate worse than death,’” Diamond’s sons said in the statement.

Soliman’s federal attorneys have said in court filings the attack “was profoundly inconsistent” with Soliman’s prior conduct and “came as a total shock to his family.”

At the time of the attack, Soliman had been living with his family in a two-bedroom apartment in Colorado Springs — about 97 miles away. He had moved to the U.S. from Kuwait in 2022 with his wife and their five children and worked in a series of low-paying jobs.

The couple divorced in April.

Investigators allege Soliman told them he intended to kill the roughly 20 participants at the weekly demonstration at Boulder’s Pearl Street pedestrian mall. He threw two of more than two dozen Molotov cocktails he had with him while yelling, “Free Palestine!”

Police said he told them he got scared because he had never hurt anyone before.

Federal prosecutors allege the victims were targeted because of their perceived or actual connection to Israel. Soliman’s federal defense lawyers argue he should not have been charged with hate crimes because he was motivated by opposition to Zionism, the political movement to establish and sustain a Jewish state in Israel.

An attack motivated by someone’s political views is not considered a hate crime under federal law.

State prosecutors have identified 29 victims in the attack. Thirteen were physically injured. The others were nearby and considered victims because they could have been hurt. A dog was also injured in the attack, and Soliman was charged with animal cruelty.

Soliman’s wife, Hayam El Gamal, and their children spent 10 months in immigration detention until a federal judge in Texas ordered their release in April.

An immigration appeals court had dismissed their case to stay in the U.S. and issued a deportation order. But U.S. District Judge Fred Biery in San Antonio allowed their release on the condition that El Gamal and her oldest child, who is 18, wear electronic monitoring.

Soliman’s attorneys seek to block the family’s deportation until a judge determines they won’t need to be present for court proceedings in his federal case.

Toss out Wednesday night’s results. Michael Lorenzen believes he can pitch at Coors Field. His manager thinks so too.

The box score said otherwise: Over five innings, the Mets had 11 hits off the Rockies’ right-hander, leading to seven runs as the Mets cruised to a 10-5 win.

The announced crowd at Coors was 11,155 on a night when the temperature at first pitch was 41 degrees. That is the lowest home crowd in Rockies history. However, the Rockies said that many fans exchanged their tickets for another game after this week’s snow, postponed games, and the fact that Wednesday’s game was pushed back from a 6:40 p.m. start to a 7:20 p.m. start.

The fans who stayed away were probably glad they did, because the Rockies suffered their sixth consecutive loss, and their sweep of the Mets at Citi Field on April 24-26 seems long ago and far away.

Manager Warren Schaeffer saw a mixed bag from Lorenzen.

“That’s a lot of hits, 11, and he had three walks in there that hurt,” Schaeffer said. “Good pitch mix, but they were on him. When he threw it over the plate, they put the ball in play — whether hard sometimes or not. They made it work, so hats off to them.”

Lorenzen’s night began ominously when Juan Soto hit Lorenzen’s third pitch of the game 435 feet and into the left-centerfield seats. It was the first leadoff home run of Soto’s career.

Lorenzen said he “wasn’t making excuses,” but said he did feel like he threw decent pitches, save for a leadoff homer by Soto and a triple by MJ Melendez two batters later.

“I wouldn’t say they were on me, there was a lot of, like, 77 mph hits,” said Lorenzen, who is 2-4 with a 6.92 ERA after eight starts (nine appearances). “There was one Coors-style double in there. There were a lot of bloops that were hit over second base on changeups and sinkers.”

The right-hander, whom the Rockies signed to a one-year, $8 million contract, with a team option worth $9 million next season, owns a 9.64 ERA after four starts at Coors this season.

But Schaeffer put his full faith and trust in Lorenzen, Coors or no Coors.

“I see too small of a sample size to make a thing (out of) that one,” Schaeffer said. “The first game that he pitched against Philadelphia (nine runs on 12 hits over three innings) was a throw-away game. Michael will be fine. He wanted to come here, to pitch here specifically. He’ll figure it out.”

Lorenzen said it’s “just been kind of frustrating” for him this season.

Colorado’s trout fisheries could face a difficult summer, impacting the state’s billion-dollar angling industry, as widespread drought conditions drive predictions that streamflows will be well below-average.

Kirk Klancke, the president of the Colorado Headwaters Chapter of Trout Unlimited, said he is concerned that the drought will stress fisheries this summer, especially if temperatures are anywhere near as elevated as they were this winter.

“If this summer is anything like this past winter was, the chances are pretty good that there’s going to be fish kills in our streams,” Klancke said. “It’s 100% given that, without some miracle monsoon season, we’re going to see (river) temperatures that threaten trout — and fishermen who care will be fishing in the mornings.”

Colorado, and much of the West, experienced one of the hottest, driest winters on record. In March, a climate change-fueled heatwave rapidly melted off the state’s already historically poor snowpack to record-low levels. With little snow left to melt, only about half the normal amount of water is expected to flow through most rivers this summer, and some rivers could see closer to a quarter of the normal flows, according to the latest Colorado Water Supply Outlook report.

Colorado’s angling industry generates nearly $2 billion in total economic output annually and supports over 15,000 jobs statewide, according to the state government. The state has 6,000 miles of streams, including over 360 miles that Colorado Parks and Wildlife has designated as Gold Medal trout fishing, and more than 1,300 lakes and reservoirs. Fly fishing, especially for rainbow and brown trout, is among the most popular forms of fishing in the state.

While every summer has its “ebbs and flows,” Patrick Gamble, a fly fishing guide for Straightline Sports in Steamboat Springs, said anyone visiting Colorado to fish this summer should expect the experience to be a little different that past years.

With the low flows, Gamble said he’s already called a number of his customers who had booked June trips on the Yampa River to reschedule for earlier in the spring, since he doesn’t expect the river to flow later in the summer. As temperatures get hotter heading into the summer, he said anglers should also plan to fish in the cool of mornings, rather than on hot afternoons, or at higher elevations to avoid harming trout populations.

“This year, when you have less water, there’s still as much pressure — just as many eagles, ospreys, more river otters than ever and angling pressure to boot,” Gamble said. “Coming off the lowest snowpack in recorded history, it’s definitely super concerning.”

Drought likely to stress trout populations

With most of Colorado’s rivers expected to experience extremely low streamflows, Klancke said, “we’re really worried this year is going to be really hard to keep fish alive,” especially if there are above-normal temperatures.

When rivers run low, the water is spread thin and warms faster, Klancke explained. That is a problem because hot water holds less dissolved oxygen, which cold-water species like trout — the primary targets of Colorado’s angling industry — need to breathe, he said.

“Your river is built like a solar collector,” Klancke said. “When your flows are depleted, it’s the same width of streambed, but the river spreads out over that width, and it’s very shallow. The rocks collect the heat because they are exposed when the river is shallow. That heats up the river.”

When water temperatures approach 71 degrees Fahrenheit, Colorado Parks and Wildlife public information officer Rachael Gonzales said trout become stressed and will feed less. If conditions are severe enough, Gonzales said the state wildlife agency can issue voluntary or mandatory closures of certain stretches of river. She said aquatic biologists are monitoring the rivers and will determine if actions are needed this summer.

Trout Unlimited and most Colorado fly fishing outfitters recommend anglers stop fishing for trout when water temperatures hit 68 degrees, so as not to harm the fish. Even during a year with a normal snowpack, Klancke said that some streams hit this threshold several days a year.

“At 68 degrees, we tell people to just quit fishing because you can catch a fish and have all the thrill of playing him, getting him in a net, releasing him properly, but when he swims away, he’s expended so much energy he can’t recover,” he said. “At 68 degrees, it really becomes catch and kill, instead of catch and release.”

Anglers stress ethical fishing during drought year

While anglers hope the period of wetter, cooler weather Colorado has seen over the last couple of weeks continues, long-term forecasts suggest the West could be in for a hot summer.

Over the next three months, western Colorado is likely to see above-normal temperatures and average to slightly-below average precipitation, according to the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center.

“The most important message for this summer is, if you’re a catch-and-release fisherman, fish with a thermometer and know what temperatures threaten trout,” Klancke said. “It’s not just water conservation in a drought year, it’s how we handle our fisheries and keep these fish alive.”

Across Colorado, Trout Unlimited and other conservation groups are working to educate visitors about the drought conditions and how hot water can impact trout. This summer, Klancke said the Colorado Headwaters Chapter will launch into “high gear” radio and newspaper education campaigns and volunteers leaving flyers under the windshields of vehicles parked along rivers in Grand County on hot days.

The warmer it gets this summer, the fewer “easy-access” trout fishing locations there will be in the lower Yampa Valley, Gamble said. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any fishing; it just means anglers may have to move to higher elevations, where temperatures are cooler.

“Being trout-centric in the state of Colorado, you definitely epitomize a hot summer day with a dry fly and searching a river bank with a grasshopper fly,” Gamble added. “But, sometimes that just means you need to be up at 9,000 feet, instead of down at a valley floor at 7,000 feet, to find water that releasing a trout in is ethical.”

Gonzales said that in addition to starting early and avoiding warm water, it is also important to not overcrowd an area. She suggested anglers also target warm-water species of fish, like pike, which face fewer impacts during hot weather. 

Because the vast majority of Colorado’s fly fishing guides are ethical anglers and won’t fish in conditions that stress fish, Klancke said many fly fishing guides may work mornings only on hot days. If this summer sees extended periods of warmth, he said that could have ripple effects across the industry.

“This is particularly hard on our guides because our guides now are going to half day,” he said. “Think about it — they’re going to have their income cut in half. … To have your work hours cut in half is just really hard on professional guides.”