Boulder Shooting Victim Kevin Mahoney Had A Big Heart

BOULDER, CO — When the pandemic hit, Kevin Mahoney, 61, decided to take over grocery shopping duties for his household and was joking around with his wife, Ellen Mahoney, on Monday ahead of his routine trip to the local King Soopers, according to The Denver Post.

He never returned from that trip. While he was shopping, a gunman entered the store with what law enforcement officials said was an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and opened fire inside, killing 10 people, including Mahoney, the father of two.

Mahoney retired several years ago from working in hospitality development and had spent part of his free time volunteering for the Boulder chapter of Meals on Wheels, Ellen Mahoney told the Post. Ellen Mahoney recalled that Kevin loved national parks, and the couple spent the past year of the pandemic going on hikes together.

“Kevin was such a kind person, a great friend,” she told the paper. “He also had a great sense of humor. … He will be really, truly, dearly missed.”

Mahoney's daughter, Erika Mahoney, took to Twitter to mourn her father, saying he represented "all things love" and was looking forward to becoming a grandfather in the summer.

“I am heartbroken to announce that my Dad, my hero, Kevin Mahoney, was killed in the King Soopers shooting in my hometown of Boulder, CO,” she said. "I'm so thankful he could walk me down the aisle last summer. ... I am now pregnant. I know he wants me to be strong for his granddaughter."

Erika Mahoney works as news director for public radio station KAZU in California. She told NPR that the King Soopers supermarket was only five minutes from her parents’ home and was the one where her family shopped all the time.

She said Kevin Mahoney wasn’t a father just to her and her brother as they grew up in Boulder; he was like a dad to all the other children in the neighborhood. “He would play outside with us for hours in the summertime, like hide and seek all over the neighborhood,” Erika Mahoney said. “He was just, like, the best dad ever.”

Erika Mahoney told the news station it will be tough not to have her father around, especially when her daughter is born, but that she'll always remember him for his big heart and his humor. “I think about my daughter and that my dad will never be able to hold her, but I know on some level he will be there, and he was so excited,” she said. “And I'm going to tell her that he loves her so much.”