A Colorado gunman who killed five people at an LGBTQ+ nightclub plans to plead guilty to new federal charges of hate crimes and firearms violations under a deal that allows the defendant to avoid the death penalty.
Anderson Aldrich, 23, agreed with prosecutors to plead guilty to 50 hate crime charges and 24 firearms violations, according to court documents released Tuesday. Under the proposed agreement, Aldrich would receive 190 years in prison, plus multiple life sentences, but would still have to be approved by a judge.
The court terminated the plea agreement reached on Jan. 9 after Aldrich pleaded not guilty in his first court appearance Tuesday afternoon. The gun charges could carry up to the death penalty, according to the agreement.
Aldrich, who claimed after the shooting that he identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, was sentenced to life in prison in June after pleading guilty to murder and 46 state counts of attempted murder at Club Q in Colorado. was sentenced. Spring on November 19, 2022.
Colorado Club Q's 'non-binary' gunman pleads guilty to murder and sentenced to life in prison
A police booking photo released in Colorado Springs in 2022 shows 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, the suspect in the mass shooting that killed five people at an LGBTQ nightclub, with facial injuries. is shown in the photo. (Colorado Springs Police Department)
The new charges and planned agreement were announced days after federal prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty in another hate crime case in which a white gunman killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket on May 14, 2022. It was done. The decision does not affect Attorney General Merrick Garland's suspension of federal executions.
Ashtin Gamblin, who was shot nine times and seriously injured in the attack at Club Q, appeared at a hearing Tuesday and called the shooting a hate crime. She also told federal prosecutors that Aldrich should be sentenced to death, even if he is not executed. That's because she wanted the defendant to “sit with the feeling of not knowing when” he would die or his punishment would happen. It can be done “anytime, any time”.
Mr. Aldrich also pleaded no contest to the state charge of hate crime under the plea agreement.
Jeff Aston, whose son Daniel Aston was shot and killed in the attack, called the shooting a “hateful, stupid, heinous and despicable act” and expressed his condolences to Aldrich, as did the victims and their families. He said he wanted him to suffer.
Michael Anderson, who was a bartender at Club Q at the time of the shooting, said the federal charges would serve as a deterrent by “sending a message to people who would commit acts of violence” against the LGBTQ+ community. I want to let people know that this is different.” It's something that gets swept away or overlooked. ”
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People visit a memorial outside Club Q, the LGBTQ nightclub that was the scene of a mass shooting that killed five people in 2022. (AP)
“No amount of justice served across the state or across the commonwealth can undo the bullets that were fired,” Anderson said.
During Aldrich's sentencing in state court last year, Colorado Springs District Attorney Michael Allen said the possibility of the death penalty in the federal system was “a big part of the defendant's motivation to plead guilty to the state charges.” ”, he said.
Colorado abolished the death penalty in 2020.
Aldrich declined to speak at his sentencing hearing in state court and has not yet said why he wandered around the club, went outside, came back wearing body armor and opened fire with a rifle. The shooting was stopped when a Navy officer grabbed the barrel of a rifle, burning his hand, and an Army veteran helped subdue Aldrich until police arrived.
Prosecutors say Aldrich had been to the club at least six times before the night of the shooting, and that Aldrich's mother forced her child to go there.
Anderson Lee Aldrich listens as shooting victim Ashtyn Gamblin reads an impact statement after pleading guilty to murder and other charges in a June 26, 2023 court video still. (El Paso County Court/Handout via Reuters)
The defendant admitted to The Associated Press in a phone call from prison that he had taken “a very large amount of drugs” and was abusing steroids at the time of the shooting. Aldrich said claims that the attack was motivated by hatred are “completely off base.”
The district attorney said those statements were self-serving and that Aldrich's claim to be non-binary was an attempt to avoid hate crime charges, adding that before the shooting, Aldrich claimed to be non-binary. He pointed out that there was no evidence that he was aware of this.
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The shooting comes more than a year after Aldrich was arrested on charges that he threatened his family and vowed to become the “next mass murderer” while stockpiling weapons, bulletproof vests and bomb-making materials. Ta. The grandparents refused to cooperate with prosecutors.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
