COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The person who already pleaded guilty to state charges related to a deadly shooting at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in 2022 pleaded guilty a second time Tuesday morning - this time to 74 federal charges, including 50 hate crime charges.
Anderson Aldrich was sentenced to life in prison last June after pleading guilty to the state charges of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder — one for each person at Club Q during the attack on Nov. 19, 2022.
Daniel Aston, Kelly Loving, Ashley Paugh, Derrick Rump and Raymond Green Vance were killed in the shooting. Seventeen other people were wounded.
Aldrich entered the guilty pleas under a deal with prosecutors that allows the shooter to avoid the death penalty. The shooter was sentenced to 55 life sentences for the hate crimes, plus a total of 190 years on other counts.
With the plea the shooter entered Tuesday, they are admitting, for the first time, the shooting was a hate crime.
In Tuesday's hearing, the shooter heard from more than a dozen people who lost loved ones that night or were injured themselves. Survivor Svetlana Heim said the hearing felt like the last chapter of a book.
"Not only did the shooter impact all of our lives, he reversed his own life with going from total freedom to absolute confinement. That’s where he belongs, and that is where he will stay," Heim said.
At least 11 of the people who spoke at the sentencing had hopes the death penalty would be considered. The Department of Justice would not elaborate on why the death penalty was taken off the table. At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Kristen Clarke, the Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said there were a number of factors they had to consider.
"For each death eligible offense there’s a wide range of factors that are considered, and the specific deliberations are internal to the DOJ," she said. "Hate crimes have no place in America today. We understand the grief and pain that families and victims continue to endure as a result of this tragedy, and we hope that today’s severe sentence provides some small measure of justice."
Defense attorneys in the state case said their client is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. The attorneys argued that Aldrich was drugged up on cocaine and medication at the time of the shooting. In phone calls from jail with The Associated Press last year, Aldrich didn’t answer directly when asked whether the attack was motivated by hate, saying only, that’s “completely off base,” and did not reveal a motivation to the AP or in state court.
According to the sentencing statement, the shooter had been at the club at least eight times before the shooting, including one visit about an hour and a half before the shooting.
The document says the shooter shared anti-transgender views online. The shooter also used anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and expressed an interest in mass shootings, the document says.
The document says the shooter was fired from a job weeks before the shooting, in September 2022. Shortly after the termination, the shooter's former supervisor, who is gay, "received a barrage of emails containing anti-gay slurs and commentary," according to the document.
With the plea deal, the shooter waived almost all of their rights for an appeal on the federal charges. When the judge asked if the shooter wanted to speak, they simply said, "Not at this time."
Shooting survivor Ed Sanders told the media that had the shooter spoken, he would have likely walked out.
Sanders said he does forgive the shooter, but did want them to face the death penalty.
"I was disappointed because of the death penalty being not offered, but I understand that is a long process and we really didn’t want to go through it, but that’s really in our hearts what we wanted, but we’ll take what we can get," Sanders said. "I think God will take care of it in its own time."
According to the Justice Department, the shooter will serve their sentence in the Colorado Department of Corrections, but if an issue would arise regarding their convictions in state court, then the shooter would be transferred to federal custody to serve out their sentence.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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