The perpetrator of the attack that left five people dead in Colorado in 2022 pleaded guilty to the counts of murder and attempted murder on trial. The gunman who killed five people when he opened fire last year in an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado, United States, was sentenced to life in prison this Monday (06/26).
Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, pleaded guilty to the deaths and attempted murders of 46 others, as well as failing to plead two misdemeanor charges.
The sentence, which rules out the possibility of parole, is the result of a legal agreement signed with prosecutors to spare relatives of the victims and survivors of a long and painful trial in the courts.
“You targeted a group of people just to exist,” said Judge Michael McHenry. “Like so many people in our culture, you chose to find power that day behind the trigger of a gun. Your actions reflect the deepest evil in the human heart, and evil often arises from ignorance and fear.”
Background
Aldrich carried out the attack nearly a year after he was arrested for threatening his grandparents, stocking up on guns and vowing to become “the next mass murderer.”
The complaint was eventually dropped after Aldrich’s mother and grandparents refused to cooperate with the prosecution and to testify. Released, Aldrich continued to stockpile weapons even after some of his arsenal was seized by authorities.
Indignation
On November 19, 2022, Aldrich broke into an LGBTQ nightclub, Club Q, in the city of Colorado Springs, and opened fire on the crowd using a semi-automatic rifle, killing five and wounding 25 others, only stopping after being stopped by one. person who visited the house.
The attack, carried out on the night when the club celebrated International Transgender Remembrance Day – officially celebrated the following day, November 20 – weighed heavily on the LGBTQ community.
The date is indeed dedicated to remembering trans lives lost to transphobic violence and Club Q was considered a safe haven.
The episode adds to a long history of attacks on LGBTQ venues across the United States, the deadliest killing 49 people at an Orlando, Florida nightclub in 2016.
ra/ek (DW, AP)
Source: Terra
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