Colorado Springs Gay Nightclub Mass Shooter Gets Life In Prison
Image: Club Q shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich.
The Colorado Springs gunman who killed five people at an LGBTQI nightclub last year has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mass shooter, Anderson Lee Aldrich was sentenced on Monday to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the 2022 massacre at gay nightclub Club Q in Colorado Springs.
Aldrich was accused of using an AR-style rifle to terrorise a Colorado LGBTQ nightclub which saw five people killed, and 19 others injured. He pleaded guilty to five counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder.
The 23-year-old also pleaded no contest to two hate crimes, one a felony and the other a misdemeanour.
Shooter Sought Power Behind A Gun, Says Judge
Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen spoke about the sentencing in a news conference, calling it the “longest sentence ever achieved in the Fourth Judicial District and the second, to my knowledge, longest sentence ever achieved in the state of Colorado, second only to the sentence achieved in the Aurora theatre shooting case”.
Judge Michael McHenry condemned the actions of the mass shooter, stating “Like too many other people in our culture, you chose to find a power that day behind the trigger of a gun. Your actions reflect the deepest malice of the human heart and malice is almost always born out of ignorance and fear”.
“The sentence of this court is the judgment of the people of the state of Colorado that such hate will not be tolerated and that the LGBTQ+ community is as much a part of the family of humanity as you are”, Judge McHenry said.
Aldrich will also receive 46 consecutive 48-year sentences for the attempted murder counts followed by mandatory periods of parole, according to the judge.
No Sympathy For Mass Shooter
Club Q bartender Michael Anderson, who was working on the night of the mass shooting and was forced to duck while several patrons were gunned down around him, told Associated Press (AP) that no one sympathised with the gunman.
“This community has to live with what happened, with collective trauma, with PTSD, trying to grieve the loss of our friends, to move past emotional wounds and move past what we heard, saw and smelled”, Anderson said.
During February, preliminary hearings took place to determine the strength of the case against Aldrich and whether it should proceed.
Aldrich, who has identified as nonbinary and prefers the pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’ since their arrest, reportedly visited Club Q on a minimum of six occasions in the years leading up to the assault.
Their defence attorneys prioritised Aldrich’s mental well-being, pointing to their past drug use and long-term abuse at home as a defence to counter the argument that the mass shooting was a hate crime.
In a recent interview with AP, Aldrich said they felt a need to “take responsibility for what happened”.
Mass Shooter Expresses Remorse
One of Aldrich’s defence attorneys, Joseph Archambault told the court that their behaviour following the incident was remorseful.
“Aldrich’s behaviour after this incident says they’re sorry, upset and emotional about what they did. It’s categorically different than someone who targets a group, and that’s not what Aldrich did”, Archambault said.
During the court proceedings, family members and close friends of the victims were given the opportunity to deliver statements, commemorating their loved ones. Survivors also shared their experiences, with several appealing to the judge to impose the harshest punishment for the mass shooting.
“Please your honour, I’m pleading with you: Lock this animal away to the depths of hell,” said Cheryl Norton, whose daughter Ashtin Gamblin was shot nine times but survived.
Norton told the court that Gamblin was covered in the blood of Daniel Aston, another shooting victim who did not survive.
Mass Shooter Ran Neo-Nazi Website
In February this year, testimony from police detective Rebeca Joines stated that Aldrich ran a neo-Nazi website and used gay and racial slurs while gaming online.
According to the detective, in addition to sharing an image depicting a rifle scope targeting a gay pride parade, Aldrich used a derogatory slur when referring to someone who identified as gay.
The victims of the Club Q incident were part of a larger group of individuals who lost their lives in mass shootings in the United States in 2022 alone. According to The Gun Violence Archive, there were 647 mass shootings in the United States last year and more than 44,000 people died due to gun violence overall.
