5 killed at Colo. gay club, police say
‘Heroic people’ help to subdue gunman; dozens left injured
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A 22-year-old gunman opened fire inside a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, killing five people and leaving 25 injured before he was subdued by “heroic” patrons and arrested by police who arrived within minutes, authorities said Sunday.
Two firearms, including a “long rifle,” were found at Club Q after the shooting Saturday night, said Police Chief Adrian Vasquez.
On its Facebook page, the club called it a “hate attack.” Investigators were still determining a motive and whether to prosecute it as a hate crime, said El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen. Charges against the suspect “will likely include first-degree murder,” he said.
Police identified the gunman as Anderson Lee Aldrich, who was in custody and being treated for injuries.
A man with that name was arrested in 2021 after his mother reported he threatened her with a homemade bomb and other weapons, authorities said. They declined to elaborate on that arrest. No explosives were found, authorities said at the time, and The Gazette in Colorado Springs reported that prosecutors did not pursue any charges and that records were sealed.
Authorities were called to Club Q at 11:57 p.m. local time Saturday with a report of a shooting, and the first officer arrived at midnight.
Joshua Thurman said he was in the club with about two dozen other people and was dancing when the shots began. He initially thought it was part of the music, until he heard another shot and saw the flash of a gun muzzle.
Thurman, 34, said he ran with another person to a dressing room where someone was hiding. They locked the door, turned off the lights and got on the floor but could hear the violence unfolding, including the gunman getting beaten up, he added.
“I could have lost my life — over what? What was the purpose?” he said as tears ran down his cheeks.
The gunman was confronted by “at least two heroic people” who fought and subdued the suspect, Vasquez said.
At least seven of those injured were in critical condition, authorities said.
The shooting rekindled memories of the 2016 massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that killed 49 people. Colorado has experienced several mass killings, including at Columbine High School in 1999, a movie theater in suburban Denver in 2012 and at a Boulder supermarket last year.
Club Q features a drag show on Saturdays, according to its website. Club Q’s Facebook page said planned entertainment included a “punk and alternative show” preceding a birthday dance party, with a Sunday all-ages drag brunch.
Drag events have become a focus of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and protests recently as opponents, including politicians, have proposed banning children from them, falsely claiming they’re used to “groom” children.
Attorney General Merrick Garland was briefed on the shooting, and the FBI was assisting police with the investigation.
President Joe Biden said that while the motive for the shootings was not yet clear, “we know that the LGBTQI+ community has been subjected to horrific hate violence in recent years.”
“Places that are supposed to be safe spaces of acceptance and celebration should never be turned into places of terror and violence,” the president said.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who became the first openly gay man in the United States to be elected governor in 2018, called the shooting “sickening.”
A makeshift memorial sprang up Sunday near the club, including flowers and a sign saying “Love over hate.”
Seth Stang was buying flowers for the memorial when he was told that two of the dead were his friends. The 34-year-old transgender man said it was like having “a bucket of hot water getting dumped on you . ... I’m just tired of running out of places where we can exist safely.”
Colorado Springs, a city of about 480,000 located 70 miles south of Denver, is home to the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Olympic Training Center, as well as Focus on the Family, a prominent evangelical Christian ministry that lobbies against LGBTQ rights. The group condemned the shooting and said it “exposes the evil and wickedness inside the human heart.”
The CEO of a national LGBTQrights organization, Kevin Jennings of Lambda Legal, pleaded for tighter gun restrictions.
“America’s toxic mix of bigotry and absurdly easy access to firearms means that such events are all too common and LGBTQ+ people, BIPOC communities, the Jewish
community and other vulnerable populations pay the price again and again for our political leadership’s failure to act,” he said in a statement.
The shooting came during
Transgender Awareness Week and just ahead of Sunday’s International Transgender Day of Remembrance, when events are held worldwide to remember transgender people lost to violence.