Colorado LGBTQ+ nightclub mass shooting suspect pleads guilty, receives 5 life sentences

EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. — The 23-year-old accused of opening fire at a Colorado Springs LGTBQ+ club last year, killing five people and injuring more than a dozen others, pleaded guilty Monday to five counts of first-degree murder and other charges. A judge later sentenced him to five consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole.

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Prosecutors last year charged Anderson Lee Aldrich, who goes by they/them pronouns, with more than 300 criminal counts in connection with the Nov. 19, 2022, shooting at Club Q. On Monday, they pleaded guilty to murder charges as well as 46 counts of attempted first-degree murder. They also pleaded no contest to two counts of bias-motivated crime.

Suspect sentenced to 5 life terms plus additional 2,208 years

Update 4:50 p.m. EDT June 26: Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, who pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder, was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole, The Denver Post reported.

El Paso County District Court Judge Michael McHenry added 2,208 more years in prison to the sentence -- 48 years for each of the 46 attempted-murder charges, according to the newspaper.

“For taking these five lives, and attempting to take 46 more, you will now spend the rest of your life in prison,” McHenry said. “We grieve this loss of life. And we affirm the value of all members of our community. Justice demands no less.”

-- Bob D’Angelo, Cox Media Group National Content Desk

Original report: Authorities earlier identified those killed in the Club Q shooting as Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derrick Rump, Ashley Paugh and Raymond Green Vance.

“I intentionally and after deliberation caused the death of each (of the) victims listed on those counts and then, with the attempted first-degree murder counts with intent to commit murder in the first degree, took a substantial step toward committing murder in the first degree of each of those victims,” Aldrich said Monday during an arraignment in El Paso County.

On the bias-motivated crime charges, Aldrich said, “Because of the evidence presented I believe there is a high probability of being convicted at trial to those counts, and so I’m pleading no contest or nolo contendere.”

Before their hearing, Aldrich expressed remorse and said they were on “a very large plethora of drugs” at the time of the shooting, The Associated Press reported. They told the AP, “I have to take responsibility for what happened.”

Some survivors criticized Aldrich’s comments as a calculated attempt to avoid the death penalty, the AP reported.

“No one has sympathy for him,” Michael Anderson, who was bartending at Club Q when the shooting began, told the AP. “This community has to live with what happened, with collective trauma, with PTSD, trying to grieve the loss of our friends, to move past emotional wounds and move past what we heard, saw and smelled.”

Sabrina Aston, who lost her son, Daniel Aston, in the Club Q shooting, said in court on Monday that “not for one minute do I believe your words of regret and remorse.”

“Our family and friends will never be able to watch Daniel grow and enjoy so many milestones of life,” she said in an emotional statement. “You robbed him of ever fulfilling his dreams of returning to college, having a child and so many things he will never be able to do.”

Stephanie Clark tearfully described having to tell her father and her 11-year-old niece about the death of her sister, Ashley Paugh.

“The screams and the cries of ‘No, no, no’ and begging us to please do something to bring her mommy back are forever etched in my mind,” she said. “That is something I wish that he would have to hear every day of the rest of his life.”

Aldrich was sentenced to serve the maximum sentence — life in prison without the possibility of parole — KKTV reported. They did not speak before their sentencing, according to the news station.