Shooter who killed 5 people at Colorado LGBTQ+ club charged with hate crimes in federal court

By COLLEEN SLEVIN
Associated Press

DENVER (AP) — The shooter who killed five people and endangered the lives of over 40 others at a LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs was charged with federal hate crimes Tuesday.

The charges, which include gun counts, after Anderson Aldrich, 23 , pleaded guilty last June in state court to five counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder — one for each person at Club Q during the attack on Nov. 19, 2022.

Aldrich, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, also pleaded no contest to state charges for hate crimes charges under a plea agreement. The plea was an acknowledgment there was a good chance Aldrich would be convicted of those crimes without admitting guilt. The pleas carried the same weight as a conviction.

The federal charges follow an FBI investigation into the shooting that was confirmed after Aldrich’s sentencing in state court. At the time, District Attorney Michael Allen said the threat of the death penalty in the federal system was a “big part of what motivated the defendant” to plead guilty to the state charges.