Club Q shooter spent $9,000 on gun purchases before attack, feds say

Exterior view of Club Q on Wednesday, February 22, 2023, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A Navy sailor grabbed the barrel of a gunman's rifle and an Army veteran rushed to help as they put an end to the deadly gay nightclub shooting in November, a witness testified Wednesday. police detective. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

The attacker who killed five people and injured 22 others in a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub in 2022 spent $9,000 on gun purchases in the two years before the attack, federal prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday.

Anderson Aldrich, 24, patronized at least 56 different sellers between September 2020 and November 19, 2022, the day of the Club Q attack. He then assembled an “AR-15-style assault rifle” from of various parts of privately manufactured weapons which were missing. serial numbers and proceeded with the mass shooting.

Aldrich has previously pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder and is serving five consecutive life sentences plus 2,208 years in prison on a state conviction. But Aldrich also faces 74 federal charges, including hate crimes and weapons charges, and is expected to plead guilty and be sentenced June 18 in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.

Aldrich agreed to a life sentence plus 190 years in prison on federal charges, according to court records. In a 13-page filing justifying the conviction, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office pointed to the $9,000 in gun 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 pointing toward the building's entrance and exit, and a black binder containing training material entitled “How to Manage an Asset”. Shooter.”

“The defendant amassed weapons and made significant efforts in the years preceding the shooting to ensure that he had the weapons proficiency necessary to commit the attack,” prosecutors wrote in the motion.

They noted that Aldrich had visited Club Q at least eight times before the shooting, including a short visit about 90 minutes before the attack, during which Aldrich killed Daniel Davis Aston, 28; Kelly Loving, 40; Ashley Paugh, 35; Derrick Croup, 38 years old; Raymond Green Vance, 22 years old.

Much of the sentencing motion focused on Aldrich's anti-LGBTQ rhetoric before the Club Q attack. Aldrich sent a “deluge of emails containing slurs and anti-gay comments” to a former supervisor, who was gay, after he was fired from a job at Goodwill Industries less than a month before the mass shooting, the motion states.