Hiding in the courtyard of the nightclub, bartender Michael Anderson was sure he, too, would die when he heard gunshots inside, killing his friends and colleagues.
“I felt alone, very alone and terrified,” he told AFP. “I didn’t have my phone with me. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to my mom.”
Moments earlier, he was serving drinks at Club Q, a longstanding LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs, at the gates of the Rocky Mountains in the United States.
The Q Club had announced an LGBT event for Saturday, a party “with all kinds of gender identities and numbers” to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is celebrated internationally on November 20. The music pulsed. Started hearing pops.
Five dead and 18 injured
“I looked up and saw the shadow of a tall person holding a gun. I clearly saw the gun,” he recalls. “Explosion after explosion. It was absolutely terrifying.”
“I dove behind the bar. Glass was flying around me, like there were bullets breaking through the bottles and whatever was in there.”
Fearing attack, Anderson crept into the courtyard where he and a colleague took refuge between a wall and a cubicle, seeking some form of cover.
Inside, a man to be arrested by police and identified as 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich fired indiscriminately at revelers, killing five people and wounding 18 others, some seriously. And he wasn’t done.
“I saw a gun coming out of the gate into the yard, the barrel of a gun sticking out,” Anderson recalled. “That’s where I was most afraid. Because I knew what was going to happen.” “He was going to find us,” he adds.
Mastered by two people
What happened then leaves Anderson forever grateful to the people he considers heroes. Two individuals, according to police, ran up to the shooter and subdued him. Looking up, Anderson saw him pinned to the ground.
“There were very brave people punching and kicking him, stopping him from doing any more damage,” he says.
“I don’t know who did this. But I really want to know because I’m so grateful. They saved my life last night.”
601 mass shootings in 2022
Authorities have provided no indication of a possible motive for the attack attributed to Anderson Lee Aldrich. This new drama is part of a context of escalation of acts hostile to transgender people, according to statistics from associations and the FBI.
“We must not tolerate hate,” President Joe Biden reacted from Washington. “There is currently no clear motive for this attack, but we do know that the LGBTQI+ community has been subjected to egregious hate violence in recent years,” he said in a statement.
The murder also illustrates the skyrocketing firearms-related mortality in a country where they circulate in vast numbers. There have been 601 mass shootings in the United States since the beginning of the year, including the Colorado Springs tragedy on Saturday, according to the Gun Violence Archive. A mass shooting that she said meant four or more people were shot or killed, not including the shooter.
Toute tentative de législation réellement contraignante bute toutefois sur le lobbying très puissant de la National Rifle Association, qui a de puissants leviers parlementaires, ainsi que sur l’opposition farouche de nombreux parlementaires conservateurs, partisans d’une interpretation très large du droit constitutionnel à détenir a firearm.
Source: BFM TV
