Club Q shooter sentenced to over 2,200 years in prison for more than 50 charges — the second-longest sentence in Colorado state history

The suspect in a shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was sentenced for the killing of five people and having injured 19 others, along with dozens more charges of attempted murder.

Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder and 46 counts of attempted murder, according to CNN. He was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for his murder charges, and the judge sentenced him to an additional 2,208 years in prison for the dozens of attempted murder charges.

As well, Aldrich received an additional four years for bias-motivated charges, which are Colorado's equivalent to hate crimes. This, despite the fact that Aldrich identified as "non-binary" in court filings for the case, which stated, "They use they/them pronouns, and for the purposes of all formal filings, will be addressed as Mx. Aldrich."

However, federal prosecution referred to Aldrich with male pronouns and declared that “there is zero evidence prior to the shooting that he was non-binary.”

The killer used a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun to murder patrons at the gay nightclub in November 2022.

Authorities received "numerous" 911 calls at 11:56 p.m. on a Saturday about a shooting at Club Q, and police reportedly responded to the emergency calls in three minutes.

Colorado Springs Police Deputy Chief Adrian Vasquez said, "The suspect entered Club Q and immediately began shooting people inside."

He noted, "At least two heroic people inside the club confronted and fought with the suspect and were able to stop the suspect from continuing to kill and harm others."

“That is the longest sentence ever achieved in the Fourth Judicial District and the second, to my knowledge, longest sentence ever achieved in the state of Colorado, second only to the sentence achieved in the Aurora theater shooting case,” Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen said in a press conference after the sentencing.

James Holmes, who murdered movie theater attendees in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012, received a sentence of 3,318 years and was ordered to pay restitution of over $950,000.

The prosecution could not seek the death penalty for Aldrich, as it was abolished in the state in 2020, but the threat of a death sentence from a federal case was reported to be a contributing factor in Aldrich's acceptance of a plea deal.

“The threat of the death penalty in the federal system [was] a big part of what motivated this defendant to take this plea in our case," the district attorney said. “Cases like this are why the death penalty should exist in the state of Colorado; the victims in this case deserve the ultimate punishment that the law can provide,” he added.

The mother of one of the victims, a girl who was shot nine times but survived, asked the judge to "lock this animal away to the depths of hell."

“I hope they do press charges and I hope we get the death penalty out of this,” the father of one of the deceased also said to the court.

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