Killer who attacked Colorado gay club pleads guilty to hate crimes, sentenced

DENVER (Reuters) – The convicted gunman who killed five people in a 2022 attack at a Colorado gay nightclub pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal hate crime and gun charges and was sentenced to several life sentences without possibility of release.

Anderson Lee Aldrich, 24, was previously sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to murder charges in a separate prosecution last year for the premeditated attack on Club employees and patrons Q in Colorado Springs.

Earlier this year, Aldrich also agreed to plead guilty to all 74 federal charges and face additional life sentences for planning and carrying out the attack after entering the club armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun on November 19, 2022. during a drag show. Five people were killed and more than a dozen others injured before two customers managed to wrestle Aldrich's guns away.

Aldrich, who is imprisoned in a Wyoming state penitentiary, pleaded guilty before Judge Charlotte Sweeney in U.S. District Court in Denver.

“This community is much stronger than you,” Sweeney told Aldrich as he handed down the sentence. “This community is stronger than your armor, stronger than your weapons, and it is certainly stronger than your hatred as well.”

Earlier in the hearing, several survivors and relatives of the victims described Club Q as a rare haven for LGBT people in the area and recounted the pain of losing those killed.

Wyatt Kent, a drag performer at Club Q, was working there the night of the attack alongside his partner, Daniel Aston, a bartender killed by Aldrich.

“All my 22 years before that night can never be restored, but in this I forgive you,” Kent said in court, addressing Aldrich. “As a queer community, we are the most resilient and we continue to hold that beauty within us. We continue to find joy in trauma and pain and unfortunately, these are things you will never experience for the rest of your life.

Several relatives of the victims criticized the American government's decision not to apply the death penalty.

“What I think you should do, because they don't want to give you the death penalty, is eat rat poison and then go to hell,” Estella Bell, s 'addressing the murderer of his grandson Raymond Vance. Vance, 22, had gone to Club Q with his girlfriend to celebrate a birthday.

Aldrich declined to make a statement before sentencing.

Before Tuesday's hearing, Aldrich's attorneys and prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver agreed that federal sentencing guidelines require multiple concurrent sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole and one consecutive 190 years in prison.

The most serious crimes to which Aldrich pleaded guilty included charges of intentional murder because of his sexual orientation or gender identity.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver and Jonathan Allen in New York; editing by Donna Bryson, Rosalba O'Brien and Rod Nickel)