Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, has pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder and 46 counts of attempted murder for using an AR-style rifle to terrorize Colorado’s LGBTQ nightclub, Club Q, in 2022. In total, five people were killed, and 19 others were injured in the attack. Aldrich was sentenced by Judge Michael McHenry to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole and an additional 2,208 years in prison for the attempted murder charges.
Aldrich, who identifies as nonbinary, was charged with more than 300 state counts, including murder, assault, attempted murder, and hate crimes. Aldrich also received a four-year sentence for bias-motivated charges, akin to hate-crime charges in other states. Prosecutors couldn’t seek the death penalty because Colorado abolished the death penalty in 2020, becoming the 22nd state to do so.
Club Q was long considered a safe haven for the LGBTQ community in a city with a history of being anti-gay. The massacre at the venue evoked memories of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, which left 49 people dead. The other four victims killed – Raymond Green Vance, Kelly Loving, Derrick Rump, and Ashley Paugh – were either employees or patrons at Club Q, which attracted customers from different backgrounds and sexual orientations.
During victim’s impact statements, some families of those killed and wounded implored the judge to give the harshest possible punishment. “Please your honor, I’m pleading with you: Lock this animal away to the depths of hell,” said Cheryl Norton, whose daughter Ashtin Gamblin was shot nine times but survived. She said Gamblin was covered in the blood of Daniel Aston, another shooting victim. But Aston did not survive.
Assault weapons are way too easy to access, said Ed Sanders, who was shot in the back at Club Q. Sanders told the court on Monday that Aldrich shouldn’t have had access to an assault-style rifle at all.
The Club Q victims were among at least 642 people killed in 2022 in US mass shootings – those with four or more people shot, excluding perpetrators, according to the Gun Violence Archive. And the rate of mass shooting deaths so far this year is even worse. At least 385 people have been killed in US mass shootings in just the first 177 days of this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The sentencing of the Club Q shooter came near the end of a historic Pride Month marked by celebrations as well as heightened tensions. The largest LGBTQ civil rights organization in America recently declared a national state of emergency, citing “increased homophobia and transphobia.”
The family of Derrick Rump cannot forgive his killer. “We have no forgiveness in our heart for him,” Rump’s cousin said in an audio recording played in court. “We hope karma comes back around to him as hard as it can and as often as it can,” she said.
Read More of this Story at www.cnn.com – 2023-06-26 22:37:00
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