COLO. CLUB SHOOTING CASE HEADS TO TRIAL

A shooter seemed to be driven by bias against the LGBTQ community in plotting an attack at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, killing five and wounding dozens of others, a judge acknowledged Thursday in finding that prosecutors showed enough evidence for trial on dozens of murder and hate crime charges.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys had argued Wednesday over whether Anderson Lee Adlrich’s actions were a hate crime. Aldrich, who is nonbinary and uses they and them pronouns, had visited Club Q at least six times in the years before the attack, witnesses testified. The venue has long been a sanctuary for the LGBTQ community in the mostly conservative city.

District Attorney Michael Allen told the judge that the evidence showed that Aldrich had a “distaste for LGBTQ community,” pointing to an online posting of a rifle scope over a gay pride parade picture and use of gay slurs against others and while online gaming. Aldrich was forced to go the club by their mother, Allen said, while arguing the attack was inspired by a “neoNazi White supremacist” shooting training video Aldrich posted on a website they ran.

Aldrich’s lawyers pushed back against the notion that the crime was hate-motivated by arguing that Aldrich was drugged up on cocaine and had taken multiple tablets of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax and the stimulant Adderall the night of the shooting. Drug tests from the hospital were destroyed, however.

Judge Michael McHenry didn’t specifically address the hate crime debate, saying only that there was sufficient evidence for the case to move toward trial.

No trial date has been set.