The Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado, on Sunday afternoon was so picture perfect — a bluebird sky, shoppers dipping in and out of brick buildings, children playing in a splash pad — that bystanders didn’t recognize the first flashes of flame as dangerous.

Edgar Depaz, 35, saw fire burst from a gardener’s weed sprayer and assumed it was an accident, that the man’s equipment was malfunctioning. Chloe Weber, 41, visiting the splash pad with her son, thought someone had self-immolated in protest. Lynn Segal, 72, heard the rush of fire and thought of the entertainers who sometimes perform on the mall. Rick Holter, 63, assumed someone was burning a flag in protest.

The blaze did not invoke the same gut-dropping panic of gunshots in a crowded public square. Even the sight of a shirtless man, holding two glass bottles and screaming, didn’t cause immediate dismay.

“Boulder’s a funky town and there’s always somebody on the Pearl Street Mall,” said Denver real estate agent Andi Leahey, 58. “I didn’t realize until we were literally 10 feet away from him that this guy means business — he’s out to kill.”

The following account of the six-minute fire attack that injured 12 people Sunday during a demonstration in support of Israeli hostages is based on multiple witness interviews, a police affidavit, federal court records and video taken by bystanders at the scene.

From calm to chaos

The man dressed as a gardener seemed like he was just doing his job in front of the old Boulder County Courthouse at 13th and Pearl streets. He wore an orange vest and a commercial-grade weed sprayer on his back.

Those around him did not know the weed sprayer was filled with gasoline, or that the nearby black container with a yellow top held at least 14 unlit Molotov cocktails: wine bottles and Ball jars filled with gas, red rags tucked into them as fuses.

They didn’t know the man police later identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, had dressed as a gardener only to get close to the 20 or so people who’d come to Boulder’s celebrated pedestrian mall on Sunday to advocate for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

They didn’t know the suspect had planned his attack for more than a year, switching from plotting a shooting to throwing firebombs when he was blocked from buying a gun, authorities allege.

When Soliman arrived in front of the Boulder courthouse at five till 1, he just looked like a landscaper.

Five blocks away, people were gathering outside Spruce Confections — the corner of Pearl and Eighth streets — for the weekly Run for Their Lives demonstration.

A volunteer organization that formed in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in which the terrorist organization Hamas abducted hundreds of Israeli hostages, Run for Their Lives has chapters in 230 communities across the country, including Denver and Boulder, said Miri Kornfeld, a volunteer leader for the group.

The march started at 1 p.m. Sunday.

The walkers carried signs and flags but were silent — no chanting or singing, Segal said. She’s a supporter of Palestinians and not always fully welcomed by the pro-Israel marchers. When they walk, she trails behind them by a few feet — a compromise that has evolved over time with her steady attendance.

“There are no chants,” Kornfeld said. “There is no rioting. They walk quietly and peacefully. We even tell people if we get hecklers, don’t engage. It is just about raising awareness of the hostages.”

The group walked the length of the mall, then looped back to the historic courthouse, where the participants usually pause for speeches, or to read the names of the hostages. Segal took a seat near the fountain, toward the back, a decision she’s grateful for now.

She didn’t notice the suspect before the fire. She didn’t hear any shouting or spot a conflict.

“It took me by surprise,” she said. She saw two long blasts of fire.

“He shot like this 20-foot-long line of fire,” Segal said. “…It was just kind of surreal.”

‘He was a ball of fire’

Across the street with his family, Depaz heard a crash, an explosion, screaming and a plume of thick, black smoke across the way. Then he saw Soliman catch fire.

“He was a ball of fire,” Depaz said. “He lit on fire, completely.”

Soliman stripped off his burning shirt and shed the weed sprayer. Depaz, a Firestone resident, ran toward the scene and noticed a broken bottle on the ground with liquid oozing out.

“Then he started yelling at everybody, saying… they lit his family on fire so he’s going to light them on fire,” Depaz said.

That’s when he realized the situation was no accident. He turned and ran the other direction.

“It happened super fast,” Depaz said. “There was no way anybody could have changed the outcome of that. He did what he did so fast that there was no reaction time. He just looked like he was doing a job until he just started going crazy and lighting stuff on fire.”

At the splash pad, Weber heard shouts and turned to see an approximately 10-foot ring of fire and a person lying down in the middle of it, motionless and burning.

“I saw somebody down lying in the flames that didn’t seem to be moving,” Weber said.

She realized it wasn’t a self-immolation when she saw what she described as a “fire bomb” thrown about 10 to 15 feet east of the fire. She couldn’t see who threw it, but knew then that there was someone wanting to harm others.

“It wasn’t a big boom, but it was enough to know that it wasn’t just somebody who lit themselves on fire,” Weber said. “…It was clear somebody had harmed these poor people and was looking to do more harm, potentially.”

Weber grabbed her son and quickly left the area. She called 911 at 1:27 p.m.

Leahey, the real estate agent, said she watched Soliman set bottles on fire and throw them.

“He was literally throwing fire in any direction,” she said.

One bottle hit a woman, who was about 10 feet from Leahey, burning her leg.

“She was in bad shape,” Leahey said. “It took us a minute to process, ‘There’s something extremely dangerous here.’ ”

Victims writhing in pain

Screams. Dozens of people running around. The stench of burning fuel. People’s skin melting off their bodies.

Segal became very aware of her pro-Palestinian T-shirt and small flag. She was torn between rushing to the victims or getting to safety. She opted, ultimately, to walk away — she didn’t want to be confused for the attacker.

After the first blitz, Soliman — shirtless and clutching a Molotov cocktail in each fist — paced over burning grass and a blackened burning bottle on the ground outside the courthouse, video taken by Brian Horwitz, 37, shows.

“We have to end Zionists,” Soliman shouted.

“Not here, bro,” someone answered.

As Soliman paced and witnesses called 911, demonstrators poured water over a person curled up on the ground, Horwitz’s video shows. He filmed the scene for a bit, then he jumped into action to help the elderly victims whose clothes were incinerated off their bodies and whose skin was coming off in sheets, he said.

Horwitz found a bucket on the ground, filled it with water at a nearby fountain and began dousing burn victims with water.

“I literally remember pivoting numerous times trying to figure out what I could possibly do and also keeping in the back of my mind there’s this guy who could be throwing a bomb really any second,” Horwitz said.

The victims seemed in a daze, Horwitz said. Some writhed in pain while others worried about their friends who were burned worse.

“The Jewish community have been warning people about this for so long,” Horwitz said, noting his family is Jewish. “It’s just shrugged off, and it probably will be after this week, as well. It’s very scary at the prospect of what this means for me and my wife’s children and my friends’ children and what the environment is going to be like for them growing up.”

A few minutes before the attack, he watched the march go by as they sat down to eat lunch on a patio. He’d been interested in joining their cause before but feared possible retaliation.

“I guess that fear was warranted,” Horwitz said.

‘Antisemitic nature of the attack’

The first police officer to arrive immediately ordered Soliman to the ground at gunpoint.

Soliman dropped the Molotov cocktails and obeyed. He was handcuffed at about 1:32 p.m. — six minutes after the attack started.

Later, he told investigators he’d thrown just two of his 18 Molotov cocktails because “he got scared and had never hurt anyone before,” according to a police affidavit.

Twelve people were hurt, Boulder police said. One elderly woman’s clothing badly caught on fire, Kornfeld said, and the group rolled her body to try to put out the flames. Kornfeld confirmed one of the victims — who has been released from the hospital — was a Holocaust survivor.

Soliman, an Egyptian citizen who authorities say was living in the Colorado Springs area illegally, faces state and federal criminal charges that could keep him in prison for life.

As of Monday, Kornfeld said two people remained in the hospital. Out of all the Run for Their Lives chapters across the country, this is the only time the groups have faced violence, she said.

“This was as peaceful as it could have gotten, especially in Boulder,” Kornfeld said. “Boulder is the bastion of humanitarianism in Colorado, and it just shows the antagonistic, antisemitic nature of the attack.”