The suspect accused of opening fire in a Colorado gay nightclub last year is expected to agree to a plea deal on murder and hate crime charges that come with a life sentence.
The news comes from survivors of the November 19, 2022, attack at Club Q in Colorado Springs, who told The Associated Press that prosecutors has contacted them about the proposed deal.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys declined to comment on a possible deal, but Colorado law does require that victims be notified in such a case. The victims also told the AP that prosecutors had asked them to write victim-impact statements for a June 26 hearing in the case and prepare themselves for the release of police body camera video from that night.
Five people died in the shooting and 17 others were wounded, as CrimeOnline reported. The suspect, 23-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, was charged with 305 counts, including 10 first degree murder charges — five each of first degree murder after deliberation and first degree murder with extreme indifference — and dozens of charges of attempted first degree murder, assault, and bias crimes.
Aldrich spoke with AP reporters in a series of phone calls after the wire service sent a letter asking for a comment on the 2021 arrest following a SWAT standoff, in which Aldrich allegedly threatened to be “the next mass killer.” The incident was livestreamed, but charges were later dropped when family members stopped cooperating with the investigation.
Aldrich responded to the letter in a phone call in March asking to be paid, but the AP declined. The suspect called back last month, talking with reporters in 15 minute increments because of jail phone limitations. The remarks were the defendant’s first public comments about the case.
“I have to take responsibility for what happened,” Aldrich said.
Aldrich blamed “a very large plethora of drugs” for the attack and said it was “completely off base” that the attack was motivated by hate.
But District Attorney Michael Allen told a judge that the suspect ran a website with “neo-Nazi white supremacist” training videos, and online gaming friends said that Aldrich regularly talked about hatred for police, LGBTQ people, and other minorities, using anti-Black and anti-gay slurs.
Victims and Aldrich’s friends alike don’t trust the expressions of remorse, just as they don’t trust the suspect’s declaration of being nonbinary and using they/them pronouns, which came through attorneys after the arrest.
“No one has sympathy for him,” said Michael Anderson, a Club Q bartender who was on duty when the shooting started. “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.”
Wyatt Kent, who was celebrating his 23rd birthday that night, told the AP the wounds run deep.
“Someone’s gone that can never be brought back through the justice system,” said Kent, whose partner, Daniel Aston, was bartending and was killed. “We are all still missing a lot, a partner, a son, a daughter, a best friend.”
Xavier Kraus, a former friend of Aldrich’s who lived across the hall, said the statements were disingenuous.
“I’m really glad he’s trying to take accountability, but it’s like the ‘why’ is being shoved under the rug,” said Kraus.
Asked why, Aldrich told the AP, “I don’t know. That’s why I think it’s so hard to comprehend that it did happen. … I’m either going to get the death penalty federally or I will go to prison for life, that’s a given.”
“Nothing’s ever going to bring back their loved ones,” Aldrich said. “People are going to have to live with injury that can’t be repaired.”
In addition to Aston, Derrick Rump, Daniel Green Vance, Kelly Loving, and Ashley Paugh were gunned down.
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[Featured image: FILE – Noah Reich, left, and David Maldonado, the Los Angeles co-founders of Classroom of Compassion, set up a memorial near Club Q in Colorado Springs with photographs of the five victims of a mass shooting at the gay nightclub. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)]
