The attacker who killed five people and injured 22 in a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub in 2022 spent $9,000 on weapons-related purchases in the two years before the attack, federal prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday.
Anderson Aldrich, 24, patronized at least 56 different vendors between September 2020 and Nov. 19, 2022, the day of the attack on Club Q. He then assembled an “AR-15 style assault rifle” from various privately manufactured gun parts that lacked serial numbers and carried out the mass shooting.
Aldrich already pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder in the killings and is serving five consecutive life sentences plus 2,208 years in prison on state convictions. But Aldrich is also facing 74 federal charges, including hate crime and weapons counts, and is set to plead guilty and be sentenced on June 18 in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.
Aldrich has agreed to be sentenced to life plus 190 years in prison on the federal charges, according to court records. In a 13-page filing justifying that sentence, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office pointed to the $9,000 in weapons purchases as evidence of Aldrich’s careful planning before the mass shooting.
They also cited as evidence of premeditation two items found in Aldrich’s home after the attack: a hand-drawn map of Club Q with an arrow pointed to the building’s entrance and exit, and a black binder of training material entitled “How to Handle an Active Shooter.”
“The defendant amassed weapons and undertook significant efforts in the years preceding the shooting to ensure that the defendant had the proficiency with weapons to commit the attack,” the prosecutors wrote in the motion.
They noted that Aldrich visited Club Q at least eight times before the shooting, including a short visit about 90 minutes before the attack, in which Aldrich killed Daniel Davis Aston, 28; Kelly Loving, 40; Ashley Paugh, 35; Derrick Rump, 38; Raymond Green Vance, 22.
Much of the sentencing motion focused on Aldrich’s anti-LGBTQ rhetoric before the attack at Club Q. Aldrich sent a “barrage of emails containing anti-gay slurs and commentary” to a former supervisor, who was gay, after being fired from a job at Goodwill Industries less than a month before the mass shooting, the motion says.
Aldrich also expressed anti-gay sentiments online across numerous platforms and shared a photo that depicts a rifle sight pointed at what appears to be a gay pride parade with the comment “lol” (meaning “laughing out loud”), prosecutors said.
Aldrich identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, defense attorneys have said. In state court, Aldrich told a judge they prefer to be referred to as “Mx. Aldrich.” State prosecutors expressed doubt about that claim and have said there is “zero evidence” Aldrich identified as nonbinary before the mass shooting.
Aldrich also posted videos of a mass shooting, shared a supposed manifesto written by a mass shooter, and sent a file of records that purported to be related to another mass shooting at an LBGTQ establishment in the weeks before the attack, the motion states.
Aldrich pleaded no contest to the hate crimes levied at the state level, acknowledging that prosecutors likely could prove the attack was motivated at least in part because Club Q was an LGBTQ bar, patronized by people who identify as LGBTQ.
In interviews with the Associated Press, Aldrich previously denied the attack was motivated by hate against the LGBTQ community.
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