The shooter who killed five people and injured 19 more at a Colorado Springs nightclub in 2022 was sentenced to 55 life sentences and another 190-year sentence without the possibility of parole.
Anderson Lee Aldrich pleaded guilty to 74 federal hate crime and gun charges on Tuesday as part of a plea deal that allowed him to avoid the death penalty. The 24-year-old is already serving five life sentences for state murder charges he pleaded guilty to last June, but he pleaded no contest last year to state hate crime charges.
Prosecutors argued that Aldrich’s attack on Club Q, a gay and lesbian nightclub in a conservative area of Colorado, was motivated by anti-LGBT bias.
“The admission that these were hate crimes is important to the government, and it’s important to the community of Club Q,” prosecutor Alison Connaughty said.
Defense attorneys in the state case, who said Aldrich is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, argued that Aldrich was high on cocaine and medication at the time of the shooting, the Associated Press reported.
During a phone call with the AP last year, Aldrich did not give a direct answer when asked if the shooting was motivated by hate, but said that the idea was “completely off base.”
U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney waited until she had heard from anyone who wanted to speak at the sentencing hearing before deciding whether to accept the plea agreement, telling the people in attendance that “we can go till tomorrow if you want,” according to the Washington Post.
Aldrich visited Club Q at least eight times before the shooting on Nov. 19, 2022, the Associated Press reported.
“The defendant was able to level everyone,” Connaughty said. “There were 60 rounds fired in less than 60 seconds. The defendant emptied the magazine. The defendant was prepared to inflict the maximum amount of damage in the minimum amount of time.”
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The shooting was eventually stopped by a Navy officer who grabbed the barrel of Aldrich’s rifle and an Army veteran who tackled and subdued him.
The five deceased victims of the shooting were Daniel Aston, Kelly Loving, Derrick Rump, Raymond Green Vance, and Ashley Paugh.
