Feature image photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post
Anderson Lee Aldrich , the 23-year-old who opened fire on LGBTQ+ patrons at Colorado’s popular Club Q, has pleaded guilty today of murder and attempted murder. As part of the plea deal, Aldrich will serve life in prison.
On Nov. 19, 2022, Aldrich opened fire with an AR-15 in the Colorado Springs queer hot spot just before midnight, killing five people and injuring 17 more before being stopped by club goers, including Petty Officer 2nd Class Thomas James and Army veteran Rich Fierro. Aldrich was ultimately charged with 323 criminal counts, including first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, assault, and hate crimes. Aldrich pleaded no contest to the charges of bias-motivated crimes, despite the fact that Aldrich “ran a site featuring neo-Nazi videos and sent a [Discord] photo of a rifle scope aimed over a Pride parade” and that friends recalled “Aldrich using gay and racial slurs while playing video games,” according to the Washington Post.
After the plea deal was entered today, several family members of Club Q victims addressed Aldrich and the court. The mother of bartender Daniel Aston told Aldrich, “I will never forgive you for this heinous crime.” Adriana Vance, whose son Raymond Green Vance was also killed in the shooting, told Aldrich, “[You] don’t deserve to go on” and followed by telling the court “what matters now is that [Aldrich] never sees the sunrise or the sunset.”
When rumors of the plea deal reached the media a few weeks ago, the Associated Press reported that Aldrich said, “I have to take responsibility for what happened” and “put much of the blame on drugs,” while also characterizing the crime “in passive generalities such as ‘I just can’t believe what happened’ and ‘I wish I could turn back time.’” Victims’ friends and families were quick to point out that this doesn’t align with the the “maps, diagrams, online rants and other evidence that showed months of plotting and premeditation.”
Club Q bartender Michael Anderson told the AP: “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.”
Hopefully today will be a small step forward in that healing journey.
