The man suspected of killing five people and injuring several others last Saturday at a gay bar in Colorado Springs, US, has been charged with murder and hate crimes.
Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, faces five counts of murder and five counts of committing a hate crime involving bodily harm, according to court records released Monday.
A security official said the suspect used an AR-15-style semi-automatic weapon in Saturday night’s attack on Club Q, a Colorado bar frequented primarily by gay men, but a handgun and extra ammunition were recovered.
While authorities said Saturday no explosives were found, gun control advocates wonder why police haven’t tried to activate a state law in Colorado that would allow authorities to seize the guns the suspect’s mother said she had in her possession. owned the son.
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers explained that the district attorney in charge of the investigation would file a request with the court to allow police to release more information about the criminal record of the suspect in the attack from Saturday.
Of the 25 injured at Club Q, at least seven are in critical condition, officials said.
Commenting on the attack, US President Joe Biden lamented that “the LGBTQI+ community has once again become the victim of a horrific hate crime”.
“Places that should be safe spaces of acceptance and celebration should never turn into places of terror and violence”concludes the American president.
The shooting brought back memories of the 2016 massacre at another gay bar, Pulse, in Orlando, Florida, that left 49 people dead.
Colorado has been the scene of several mass shootings in the past, including one at Columbine High School in 1999, one at a suburban Denver movie theater in 2012, and one at a Boulder grocery store last year.
The Club Q attack was the sixth mass shooting this month in the United States in a year in which 21 people were killed in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
In the US since 2006, there have been 523 mass murders and 2,727 deaths, as of Nov. 19, according to the Associated Press/USA Today database.
Source: DN
