The shooter, who killed five people and injured over a dozen others at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2022, accepted a plea deal on Tuesday in exchange for 55 concurrent life sentences on federal hate crimes charges.
Anderson Lee Aldrich pleaded guilty to all 74 counts of breaking the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, as well as firearms crimes in the Club Q shooting. Aldrich first pleaded not guilty.
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United States District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney accepted the plea agreement and sentenced Aldrich to life without parole, followed by a 190-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors announced earlier this year that they would not seek the death penalty.
“You went to this community’s safe space and mass murdered people,” Sweeney said, adding that it was fitting to sentence him to life in prison during Pride Month, which celebrates the LGBTQ community. “This community is much stronger than you—stronger than your armor, stronger than your weapons, and sure as hell stronger than your hatred.”
The attack claimed the lives of Daniel Davis Aston, Kelly Loving, Derrick Rump, Ashley Paugh, and Raymond Green Vance.
Several victims and their families appeared at the sentencing hearing, some of whom advocated for the death penalty in his case, while others used the chance to tell Aldrich about the anguish they’ve had since the shooting.
“You do not deserve to be sitting here when you took the lives of five people,” stated a Paugh relative. We want you to feel the pain you’ve caused us every day.”
“All I have left of him now is an urn that I speak to every day at night,” said Adriana Vance, Raymond Green Vance’s mother.
Aston’s parents, Jeff and Sabrina, spoke about their transgender son Daniel and condemned the anti-LGBTQ hatred that he and others have endured.
“He was probably the happiest I’ve ever seen him in the last few years” before the shooting, said Jeff Aston during the sentencing hearing. “He certainly didn’t deserve to go this way.”
Sweeney said at the Tuesday hearing that Aldrich, as part of his guilty plea, admitted to carrying out a bias-motivated attack in which he killed five people, injured 19 others with gunfire, and victimized approximately 26 others “for actual or perceived gender identity or sexual orientation.”
The sentencing proposal describes Aldrich’s alleged previous use of internet forums “to express anti-gay and anti-transgender views,” use of anti-gay insults, and harassment of a gay coworker in the years leading up to the attack.
Aldrich received a sentence of more than 2,000 years in state prison in June 2023, following his guilty pleas to five counts of first-degree murder and 46 counts of attempted first-degree murder, in addition to the federal accusations. Aldrich pleaded not guilty to two bias-motivated felonies.
On the night of November 19, 2022, Aldrich opened fire in Club Q with an AR-15-style weapon, wearing a tactical vest with ballistic plates and carrying “at least two additional magazines loaded with ammunition.” According to court documents, the club had just presented a drag show that night as part of a series of events commemorating Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20.
Only after two customers forcibly removed their guns did they apprehend Aldrich.
