The Club Q shooting suspect accused of killing five people and wounding 17 in Colorado Springs last November will spend life in prison as part of a plea deal they’re expected to strike, survivors of the attack said.
Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, faces more than 300 state charges over the fatal shooting, with the accused killer expected to get at least a life sentence after recently expressing remorse and their intention to enter a guilty plea.
While prosecutors declined to comment on the deal, Colorado state law requires them to notify victims of such upcoming proceedings, with the survivors and families who lost loved ones in the shooting telling the AP that Aldrich will plead guilty in a June 26 hearing.
Wyatt Kent, one of the survivors who was celebrating his 23rd birthday at the club, was among those reached out to by prosecutors to prepare victim-impact statements and brace themselves for the hearing, which may include video footage of the carnage.
“Someone’s gone that can never be brought back through the justice system,” said Kent, who lost his partner, Daniel Aston, a Club Q employee working behind the bar. “We are all still missing a lot, a partner, a son, a daughter, a best friend.”
The development comes after the suspect’s jailhouse phone calls with AP reporters, where they reveal they regretted gunning down innocent people and the need “to take responsibility for what happened.”
“Nothing’s ever going to bring back their loved ones. People are going to have to live with injury that can’t be repaired,” Aldrich, who identifies as nonbinary, added, stopping short of providing a motive for the shooting.
Jonathan Pullen, the suspect’s step-grandfather, echoed the sentiment, claiming Aldrich “has to realize what happened on that terrible night. It’s truly beginning to dawn on him.”
Despite the apparent remorse, some survivors of the massacre said it was all crocodile tears, accusing the shooter of passing the blame along to drug use and never mentioning a motive behind the attack.
Michael Anderson, who survived by dunking behind the counter he was bartending at, said that “no one has sympathy for him.”
He added: “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.”
Colorado Springs’ LGBTQ community was forever changed when the suspect walked into Club Q on November 19, 2022, and fired indiscriminately at the patrons and staff for more than six minutes with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle.
The massacre was cut short when Navy Officer Thomas James grabbed the gun away from the shooter, burning his hand in the process due to the extreme heat of the weapon’s barrel.
Army veteran Richard Fierro then jumped in to help subdue and beat Aldrich until police arrived.
Since their arrest, Aldrich has come out as nonbinary, allegedly visiting the club at least six times prior to the shooting.
District Attorney Michael Allen, however, said Aldrich administered a “neo-Nazi white supremacists” website that hosted a shooting training video and often expressed hatred for LGBTQ people, minorities, and even police.
Allen also claimed the suspect’s mother made him go to the club “against his will and sort of forced that culture on him.”
While defense attorneys have not denied Aldrich’s role in the shooting, they have argued that the massacre was not fueled by hate, claiming it was instead caused when the suspect was high on cocaine and medication.
Along with the state charges, the US Justice Department is currently considering filing federal hate crime charges, a senior law enforcement official said.
It remains unclear if a quick resolution to the state prosecution will resolve the FBI’s investigation.
With Post wires
