A gunman opened fire in a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs late Saturday night, killing five people and wounding at least 18 before being subdued by patrons.
Colorado Springs police Chief Adrian Vasquez identified the suspect as 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich at a news conference Sunday morning. Investigators recovered two guns on the scene and said Aldrich used a long gun during the shooting, Vasquez said. Aldrich remains in a local hospital.
Officials declined to answer questions about the suspect’s motive for the shooting, citing the ongoing investigation.
Authorities received a report of a shooting at Club Q, 3430 N. Academy Blvd., at 11:57 p.m. and responded within minutes, said Lt. Pamela Castro of the Colorado Springs Police Department. The gunman started shooting immediately after entering the club.
The first officer arrived at the scene at midnight and the suspect was detained at 12:02 a.m., she said. At least two patrons inside the club confronted the suspect and stopped him, she said.
“We owe them a great debt of thanks,” Vasquez said.
Firefighters and paramedics could get to wounded people quickly because the suspect was detained so quickly, Colorado Springs fire Chief Randy Royal said.
The shooting occurred as anti-gay rhetoric has intensified by extremists, politicians and pundits. In a statement, Club Q termed the shooting a hate attack.
“Club Q is devastated by the senseless attack on our community,” the club posted on its Facebook page. It said its prayers were with victims and families, adding: “We thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack.”
Club Q is a gay and lesbian nightclub that features a “Drag Diva Drag Show” on Saturdays, according to its website.
“Club Q is a safe haven for our LGBTQ citizens,” Vasquez said. “Every citizen has a right to feel safe and secure in our city, to go about our beautiful city without fear of being harmed or treated poorly.”
The number of injured may rise as some victims have driven themselves to hospitals, Castro said.
Seven victims were taken to Penrose Hospital, said Dr. Bill Plauth, chief medical officer. Two patients remain in critical condition, three remain hospitalized with less severe injuries and two patients were treated and released, he said. Ten patients were taken to UCHealth Memorial Hospital but officials could not give an update on their condition.
Castro could not say how many rounds were fired inside the club or how many people were inside during the shooting. She said that information was part of the ongoing investigation.
A man named Anderson Lee Aldrich and who is the same age as the shooting suspect was arrested June 18, 2021, for allegedly threatening his mother with a bomb and other weapons. Castro refused to confirm whether the suspect arrested in the Club Q shooting is the same as the man who made the threats in 2021.
In a statement early Sunday morning, Gov. Jared Polis called the shooting “horrific, sickening and devastating.”
“I have spoken with (Colorado Springs) Mayor John Suthers and made it clear that every state resource is available to local law enforcement in Colorado Springs,” Polis wrote. “We are eternally grateful for the brave individuals who blocked the gunman likely saving lives in the process and for the first responders who responded swiftly to this horrific shooting. Colorado stands with our LGTBQ community and everyone impacted by this tragedy as we mourn together.”
GLAAD — the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination — called the attack “unspeakable.”
“You can draw a straight line from the false and vile rhetoric about LGBTQ people spread by extremists and amplified across social media, to the nearly 300 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year, to the dozens of attacks on our community like this one,” GLAAD’s president and CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis, said. “That this mass shooting took place on the eve of on Transgender Day of Remembrance, when we honor the memory of the trans people killed the prior year, deepens the trauma and tragedy for all in the LGBTQ community.
In addition to the drag show, Club Q’s Facebook page said planned entertainment included a “punk and alternative show” preceding a birthday dance party, with a Sunday “all ages brunch.”
Colorado Springs is a city of about 480,000 located about 70 miles south of Denver that is home to the U.S. Air Force Academy, as well as Focus on the Family, a prominent evangelical Christian ministry.
In November 2015, three people were killed and eight wounded at a Planned Parenthood clinic in the city when authorities say a man opened fire because he wanted to wage “war” on the clinic because it performed abortions.
“We are a strong community that has showed resilience in the face of hate and violence in the past,” Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers said at the Sunday news conference. “And we will do so again.”
The shooting brought back memories of the 2016 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that killed 49 people. And it occurred in a state that has experienced several notorious mass killings, including at Columbine High School in 1999, a movie theater in suburban Denver in 2012 and at a Boulder supermarket last year.
In June, 31 members of the neo-Nazi group Patriot Front were arrested in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho — including three Coloradans — and charged with conspiracy to riot at a Pride event. Experts warned that extremist groups could see anti-gay rhetoric as a call to action.
The previous month, a fundamentalist Idaho pastor told his small Boise congregation that gay, lesbian and transgender people should be executed by the government, which lined up with similar sermons from a Texas fundamentalist pastor.
The violence is the sixth mass killing this month and comes in a year when the nation was shaken by the deaths of 21 in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
There have been 523 mass killings since 2006 resulting in 2,727 deaths as of Nov. 19, according to The Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: Orange County Register
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