At least five people were killed in a mass shooting at an LGBTQ club in the US state of Colorado in 2022.
Los Angeles:
A mass shooter who killed five people at an LGBTQ club in the US state of Colorado pleaded guilty to hate crimes on Tuesday for the horrific 2022 massacre and received another heavy sentence.
Anderson Lee Aldrich was already serving five life sentences for the armed attack at Club Q in Colorado Springs, which also injured 22 people.
A U.S. District judge added 55 more life sentences and another 190 years to that tariff after hearing how Aldrich specifically targeted members of the LGBTQ community with an arsenal of $9,000 accumulated over two years.
“You went to the safe place of this community and killed people en masse, but I hope what you learned today is that this community is much stronger than you,” said Judge Charlotte Sweeney, noting that it was appropriate to sentence Aldrich during the Month of Pride.
“This community is stronger than your armor, stronger than your weapons, and certainly stronger than your hate.”
Federal hate crime charges carry stiff penalties in the United States, and people convicted of them can face the death penalty, but prosecutors agreed to take that off the table in exchange for Aldrich’s 74 guilty pleas.
Aldrich entered Club Q on November 19, 2022, shooting dead five people with an AR-15-style assault rifle.
Two club patrons finally took down the burly, bearded gunman, detaining Aldrich until police arrived.
In court documents, federal prosecutors said Aldrich vented online before committing the crime.
“The defendant used an online platform … to disseminate a manifesto purportedly authored by someone who committed a mass shooting earlier that year,” the documents state.
“This call revealed predominantly racist and anti-Semitic beliefs, but also the following statement: ‘Transgenderism, however, is a mental illness and should be treated as such.'”
– ‘No tolerance for hate’ –
A week before the shooting, Aldrich posted a photo showing the scope of a rifle during a pride parade with the comment “lol,” the document said.
Matt Kirsch, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Colorado, told reporters after the sentencing that Aldrich admitted to what was behind the horrific acts.
“As part of today’s plea, the defendant admitted to committing acts of hate against members of the LGBTQIA+ community,” Kirsch said.
“I want to be clear that we do not tolerate hate in this country and we do not tolerate hate crimes in Colorado.
“I hope today’s sentence demonstrates to the victims and the many others affected by this horrific crime that we will not tolerate hate-fueled violence against anyone.”
Defense attorneys said Aldrich, 24, identifies as non-binary. Federal prosecutors used gender-neutral terms in the records, but state prosecutors reportedly said there is “no evidence” that the attacker identified as non-binary before the horrific episode.
The Club Q shooting was the latest in a long series of attacks on LGBTQ venues across the United States, the deadliest of which claimed 49 lives at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016.
Members of the LGBTQ community have expressed alarm at what they see as a rise in hateful rhetoric ahead of a hotly contested presidential election in November, in which incumbent Joe Biden is being challenged by Donald Trump.
LGBTQ rights are a contentious issue in America’s so-called “culture wars,” which pit liberal values against conservative ones.
With more firearms than people, the United States has the highest rate of gun deaths of any developed country.
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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