#Anderson Lee Aldrich
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A year and a half before he was arrested in the Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooting that left five people dead, Anderson Lee Aldrich allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb, forcing neighbors in surrounding homes to evacuate while the bomb squad and crisis negotiators talked him into surrendering.
Yet despite that scare, there's no public record that prosecutors moved forward with felony kidnapping and menacing charges against Aldrich, or that police or relatives tried to trigger Colorado's "red flag" law that would have allowed authorities to seize the weapons and ammo the man's mother says he had with him.
Gun control advocates say Aldrich's June 2021 threat is an example of a red flag law ignored, with potentially deadly consequences. While it's not clear the law could have prevented Saturday night's attack — such gun seizures can be in effect for as little as 14 days and be extended by a judge in six-month increments — they say it could have at least slowed Aldrich and raised his profile with law enforcement.
"We need heroes beforehand — parents, co-workers, friends who are seeing someone go down this path," said Colorado state Rep. Tom Sullivan, whose son was killed in the Aurora theater shooting and sponsored the state's red flag law passed in 2019. "This should have alerted them, put him on their radar."
But the law that allows guns to be removed from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others has seldom been used in the state, particularly in El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs, where the 22-year-old Aldrich allegedly went into Club Q with a long gun at just before midnight and opened fire before he was subdued by patrons.
An Associated Press analysis found Colorado has one of the lowest rates of red flag usage despite widespread gun ownership and several high-profile mass shootings.
Courts issued 151 gun surrender orders from when the law took effect in April 2019 through 2021, three surrender orders for every 100,000 adults in the state. That's a third of the ratio of orders issued for the 19 states and District of Columbia with surrender laws on their books.
El Paso County appears especially hostile to the law. It joined nearly 2,000 counties nationwide in declaring themselves "Second Amendment Sanctuaries" that protect the constitutional right to bear arms, passing a 2019 resolution that says the red flag law "infringes upon the inalienable rights of law-abiding citizens" by ordering police to "forcibly enter premises and seize a citizen's property with no evidence of a crime."
County Sheriff Bill Elder has said his office would wait for family members to ask a court for surrender orders and not petition for them on its own accord, unless there were "exigent circumstances" and "probable cause" of a crime.
El Paso County, with a population of 730,000, had 13 temporary firearm removals through the end of last year, four of which turned into longer ones of at least six months.
The county sheriff's office declined to answer what happened after Aldrich's arrest last year, including whether anyone asked to have his weapons removed. The press release issued by the sheriff's office at the time said no explosives were found but did not mention anything about whether any weapons were recovered.
Spokesperson Lt. Deborah Mynatt referred further questions about the case to the district attorney's office.
An online court records search did not turn up any formal charges filed against Aldrich in last year's case. And in an update on a story on the bomb threat, The Gazette newspaper of Colorado Springs reported that prosecutors did not pursue any charges in the case and that records were sealed.
The Gazette also reported Sunday that it got a call from Aldrich in August asking that it remove a story about the incident.
"There is absolutely nothing there, the case was dropped, and I'm asking you either remove or update the story," Aldrich said in a voice message to an editor. "The entire case was dismissed."
A spokesperson for the district attorney's office, Howard Black, declined to comment on whether any charges were pursued. He said the shooting investigation will also include a study of the bomb threat.
"There will be no additional information released at this time," Black said. "These are still investigative questions."
AP's study of 19 states and the District of Columbia with red flag laws on their books found they have been used about 15,000 times since 2020, less than 10 times for every 100,000 adults in each state. Experts called that woefully low and hardly enough to make a dent in gun killings.
Just this year, authorities in Highland Park, Illinois, were criticized for not trying to take guns away from the 21-year-old accused of a Fourth of July parade shooting that left seven dead. Police had been alerted about him in 2019 after he threatened to "kill everyone" in his home.
Duke University sociologist Jeffrey Swanson, an expert in red flag laws, said the Colorado Springs case could be yet another missed warning sign.
"This seems like a no brainer, if the mom knew he had guns," he said. "If you removed firearms from the situation, you could have had a different ending to the story."
#us politics#news#npr news#npr#Colorado#club q shooting#Anderson Lee Aldrich#red flag laws#gun violence#gun rights#gun control#felony kidnapping#menacing#bomb threat#Rep. Tom Sullivan#The Gazette#Second Amendment Sanctuaries#Sheriff Bill Elder#associated press#ap news#mass shootings#mass shooters
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Did anyone else watch the Anderson Lee Aldrich/Club Q hearing? His lawyer switched back to he/him pronouns and has dropped the nonbinary claims since Anderson was charged with a hate crime anyway. He now has no reason to keep up the nonbinary ruse other than defaming our community.
You can watch the latest Anderson Lee Aldrich hearing on YouTube via USA Today.
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I’d just like to point out that, again, a bad guy with a gun was stopped by good guys who didn’t have guns.
#veterans#richard m. fierro#club q#shooting#mass shooting#colorado#colorado springs#Anderson Lee Aldrich#killing#murder#hero
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#us politics#2021#twitter#tweet#the serfs#Colorado#club q shooting#anderson lee aldrich#nonbinary#conservatives#conservatives be like#republicans#republicans be like
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Every once in a while, over on Instagram, I get some asshole trying to learn me somethin'. Here's one trying to defend the Colorado shooter because he was bullied at school and had a tough life.
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Aldrich’s relationship with his mother appeared volatile last year when she called police on her son and said he threatened to harm her with a homemade bomb and other weapons.
No charges were filed, and the case has since been sealed, leaving unanswered questions about how Aldrich avoided prosecution in a matter that may ultimately have prohibited him from legally possessing a weapon if convicted. (X)
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White boy gets away with threatening to blow up and kill his mother, and other people. Then the case is sealed. I wonder if his grand daddy had anything to do with that?
Anderson Lee Aldrich, previously Nicholas F. Brink.
Mother: Laura Voepel
Father: Aaron Brink
Maternal grandfather: California Assemblyman Randy Voepel. A raging MAGA douche.
Thomas James and Richard Fierro tackled the neckbeard to the ground and beat the hell out of him. It's almost too bad the cops showed up so quickly. They should have beat him harder.
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the mother fucker who murdered my friend and 4 others at Club Q back in Nov 2022 got 5 consecutive life sentences WITHOUT the possibility of parole.
i hope he has a really really really bad time in there.
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#club q#colorado springs#gun violence#hate speech#homophobia#hate crimes#mass shootings#anderson lee aldrich#transphobia#trolling#my posts#anti lgbtq
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A year and a half before Anderson Lee Aldrich was arrested as a suspect in a Colorado Springs LGBTQ+ nightclub shooting that left five people dead, he allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb, forcing neighbors in surrounding homes to evacuate while the bomb squad and crisis negotiators talked him into surrendering.
Ring doorbell video obtained by the Associated Press shows Aldrich arriving at his mother’s front door with a big black bag the day of the 2021 bomb threat, telling her the police were nearby and adding: “This is where I stand. Today I die.”
Despite that incident, there is no public record that prosecutors sought any felony kidnapping and menacing charges against Aldrich, or that police or relatives tried to trigger Colorado’s red flag law that would have allowed authorities to seize the weapons and ammo the man’s mother says he had with him.
This makes me so pissed off. I just...I mean multiple households had to be evacuated and a bomb squad had to be called...but no one tried to prevent this man from getting access to guns?!? If police had just tried to trigger the red flag laws, 5 people might still be alive.
There needs to be accountability at some level in situations like this.
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The FBI is asking about two websites in connection with last month’s shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado that left five dead and 17 others injured, a former neighbor and friend of the suspect told NBC News.
The former neighbor, Xavier Kraus, said an FBI agent asked him about the two websites at an FBI field office in Colorado Springs last Thursday afternoon after an agent called him earlier that day.
One of the websites, Kraus said he told investigators, was created by Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, who was charged Tuesday with 305 criminal counts, including first-degree murder and bias-motivated crimes, in the mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs shortly before midnight on Nov. 19. Aldrich was subdued by three club patrons shortly after the shooting began and was then arrested by authorities.
The website allegedly created by Aldrich is a forum-type “free speech” site where people have anonymously posted racist and antisemitic memes, language and videos.
A video on the homepage titled “Wrong Targets” advocates for killing civilians as part of a larger effort to “assassinate the elites at the top” and “cleanse” society.
A link on the homepage that reads “Visit Our Brother Site!” directs to a webpage with links to four short videos, each uploaded in two different formats, that appear to have been posted in the hours leading up to the shooting.
Two of the videos show the inside of a Toyota at night; in one, the dashboard clock reads 11:44, and the person recording the video says “OK” before ending it. Local police began receiving 911 calls about a shooting at Club Q at 11:56 p.m.
The videos appear to have gone up from 9:28 p.m. to 11:43 p.m. local time on the night of the shooting. While it is unclear who recorded and posted the videos, one frame in the 11:44 video shows a reflection in the rearview mirror that resembles Aldrich.
The “brother site” previously hosted video of the mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in May that left 10 people dead, according to an archive of the page that was viewed by NBC News. Links to the site were quickly shared on the extremist sites 4chan and 8kun (formerly 8chan) in the days after the shooting, where the site and video were discussed.
Public defenders representing Aldrich, who is being held without bond, didn’t immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
A spokesperson for the FBI’s Denver field office said, “The Denver FBI Field Office, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, National Security Division, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado are aware of the situation regarding the shooting in Colorado Springs at Club Q, and we will review all available facts of the incident to determine what federal response is warranted.” The Colorado Springs police department didn’t return a request for comment.
Kraus, who, according to public records, lived one door away from Aldrich in a Colorado Springs apartment complex, said he told the FBI that Aldrich made the free speech website in late spring or early summer. Kraus said Aldrich described the site as “a platform where people could go and post pretty much whatever they want.”
“At the time, I was like, OK, I can kind of get behind that, I guess, not really realizing what it was going to actually turn into,” Kraus said. He added that he and Aldrich — whose attorneys have said is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns — visited the site together at Aldrich’s apartment about two or three times after the site was live, and that Aldrich once said they had forgotten to moderate the content added by others.
Kraus said that most of the posts currently on the site, including the racist content, were not there when he visited it with Aldrich. A message at the top of the site’s homepage states, “There are two Rules. NO CP and NO SPAMMING,” with “CP” presumably referring to child pornography.
Kraus said the agents asked whether Aldrich posted the “Wrong Targets” video on the homepage. Kraus said he told them that the video’s placement on the site “was something that only an admin could do.” He knew this because he had previously visited the site with Aldrich, but he was unable to confirm that Aldrich was the one to post the video.
The FBI also asked Kraus about the “brother site” that included the video links and whether he knew anything about it or what was on it, he said. Kraus said an agent unsuccessfully tried to access that site on a laptop while Kraus was at the field office, and a subsequent text message between Kraus and the agent also shows the agent was unable to open it at the time.
One of the four videos appears to quickly pan around the inside of an apartment. Kraus confirmed that the apartment shown was the apartment that Aldrich had lived in with their mother when Aldrich and Kraus were neighbors.
One of the videos is completely black throughout, and the two videos recorded inside the vehicle are dark, but some details can be made out. In one of the vehicle videos, the person recording says, “Shoutout to professional seven sins,” and the car dashboard clock reads 10:06.
After listening to the voice in the videos, Kraus said it “sounds very, very similar” to Aldrich, but he could not confirm this with certainty.
When asked about the “professional seven sins” remark, Kraus said that he and Aldrich were both familiar with an online community called Se7en Sins Gaming Community, but Kraus didn’t know the meaning of the remark. One of the administrators of this online community goes by the name “Professional.”
If this remark was meant to refer to the online gaming community and is tied to the alleged Club Q gunman, it would not be the first time such a reference was made by a mass shooter. Brenton Tarrant, who in 2019 shot and killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, said during a livestream of the shootings, “subscribe to PewDiePie,” a reference to a viral meme about a popular YouTuber who posted videos of himself playing video games. A livestream of the shooting was posted to 8chan, eventually leading to the site’s ban in New Zealand and rebranding to 8kun.
Less than one month later, a shooter at the Poway Synagogue in California posted a largely identical manifesto to the Christchurch shooter on 8chan shortly before the attack. Investigators said the shooter tried and failed to set up a livestream of the shooting.
Kraus said that he has felt a “tremendous amount of guilt” since the Club Q shooting. He said that he did not challenge Aldrich when they made racist or homophobic statements, including stating that they “hate faggots,” because Aldrich was “an angry person” who also owned guns.
“I know that this wasn’t something that I did, but, I don’t know how to explain it, I feel absolutely horrible knowing that I knew somebody and got to know somebody and made friends with somebody that could go in and do this horrible thing,” Kraus said. “There’s some nights I just cry, because it could have been me, it could have been, who knows what could have happened — it’s just terrifying.”
#us politics#news#nbc news#2022#club q shooting#mass shooters#mass shootings#gun rights#gun control#gun violence#Colorado#Xavier Kraus#fbi#department of justice#anderson lee aldrich#homophobia#transphobia#racism#Se7en Sins Gaming Community
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#us politics#club q shooting#Colorado#anderson lee aldrich#memes#2022#mass shooters#mass shootings#gun violence#nonbinary#transphobia#homophobia#hate crime#Aaron Franklin Brink
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Ahead of the hearing, attorneys for Aldrich submitted a court filing stating the suspect identifies as nonbinary. “They use they-them pronouns, and for the purposes of all formal filings, will be addressed as Mx. Aldrich,” the court document noted.
Asked after the hearing about the potential impact on the case of the defendant’s nonbinary distinction, Allen said: “To us, his legal definition in this proceeding is the defendant,” adding, “It has no impact on the way that I prosecute this case.”
The prosecutor declined to comment on the motive for the crime or the investigation.
“I want them to know that we are going to be the voice for the victims in the courtroom and that we will be fighting alongside them during this entire process,” Allen said of the victims’ families.
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