In connection with federal hate crimes charges, the gunman who opened fire on an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 2022, killing five people and injuring over a dozen more, agreed to a plea deal on Tuesday and was given 55 concurrent life terms.
In response to the 74 counts against him for firearms offenses related to the Club Q massacre and for breaking the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate offenses Prevention Act of 2009, Anderson Lee Aldrich entered a guilty plea. At first, Aldrich entered a not guilty plea.
Aldrich was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole and 190 years in jail after United States District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney accepted the plea deal.
Earlier in the year, the prosecution declared that they would not pursue the death penalty.
“You went to this community’s safe space and mass murdered people,” Sweeney remarked, justifying his life sentence in light of Pride Month, an occasion to celebrate the LGBTQ community. “This community is much stronger than you, stronger than your armor and stronger than your weapons and sure as hell stronger than your hatred.”
The victims of the attack were Raymond Green Vance, Ashley Paugh, Derrick Rump, Kelly Loving, and Daniel Davis Aston.
During the sentencing hearing, a number of victims and their families spoke. Some of them expressed their support for the death sentence in this case, while others used the occasion to inform Aldrich of the suffering they had endured following the massacre.
A Paugh relative remarked, “You do not deserve to be sitting here when you took the lives of five people. I want you to feel the pain every day that you’ve caused all of us.”
The only thing that remains of him is an urn that she talks to every night,” Raymond Green Vance’s mother Adriana Vance stated.
Speaking about their transgender son Daniel, Aston’s parents Jeff and Sabrina condemned the hate speech directed towards the LGBTQ community that he and others have to endure.
According to Jeff Aston, “he was probably the happiest I’ve ever seen him in the last few years” prior to the shooting. “He certainly didn’t deserve to go this way.”
As part of the guilty plea, Aldrich acknowledged that he carried out a premeditated attack with bias motivation, killing five people, injuring 19 others with gunfire, and harming roughly 26 other people. These victims were targeted “for actual or perceived gender identity or sexual orientation,” according to Sweeney during the Tuesday hearing.
Aldrich is accused of using the internet “to express anti-gay and anti-transgender views,” using derogatory language against homosexual people, and harassing a gay coworker in the years before the attack, according to the sentencing recommendation.
Aldrich was already sentenced to more than 2,000 years in state prison in June 2023 after entering a guilty plea to five counts of first-degree murder and 46 counts of first-degree attempted murder, in addition to the federal accusations. Aldrich entered a plea of not guilty to two counts motivated by bias.
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On the evening of November 19, 2022, Aldrich opened fire in Club Q with an AR-15-style weapon. He was also carrying “at least two additional magazines loaded with ammunition” and was dressed in a tactical vest with ballistic plates.
According to court documents, the club had recently held a drag show that evening as one of several activities to commemorate Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20.
It was only after two customers physically took away Aldrich’s gun that he was stopped.
