Colorado gay nightclub killer due to plead guilty to federal charges, get life in prison

[June 18, 2024]  By Keith Coffman and Jonathan Allen
 
(Reuters) - The convicted shooter who killed five people in a 2022 attack at a gay nightclub in Colorado is expected to plead guilty to federal hate crime and gun charges at a court hearing on Tuesday and be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  

Anderson Lee Aldrich takes his seat following a break, after he pleaded guilty to murder and other crimes in a 2022 shooting that killed five people at the Club Q gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S. in a still image from courtroom Webex video June 26, 2023. El Paso County Court/Handout via REUTERS

Anderson Lee Aldrich, 24, has already been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to state murder charges in a separate prosecution last year for the attack on Club Q in Colorado Springs.

Aldrich subsequently agreed to plead guilty to 74 federal charges, court records show, for planning and carrying out the attack at the club after entering armed with a semiautomatic rifle on Nov. 19, 2022, during a drag show. Five people were killed and more than a dozen others injured before two patrons at the club managed to wrest Aldrich's gun away.

After pleading, Aldrich will be sentenced by Judge Charlotte Sweeney at the same hearing at the U.S. District Court in Denver.

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 a consecutive sentence of 190 years in prison.

The most serious crimes to which Aldrich is due to plead guilty are charges of willfully killing someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

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

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