Club Q shooter pleads guilty to 74 charges and is sentenced to life imprisonment

The person who killed five people and injured 17 others at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub in 2022 pleaded guilty to 74 counts in federal court on Tuesday.

The deal, which overturned an earlier not guilty plea, calls for a total of 55 life sentences plus 190 years in prison.

The federal charges against 24-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich – who uses they/them pronouns – included 50 hate crimes. The sentence comes on top of five consecutive life sentences imposed last summer in a state case. Aldrich also pleaded guilty in that case.

“You have targeted this community where it lives and breathes,” U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney told Aldrich as she accepted the guilty plea.

Several survivors and family members of the shooting victims urged the judge at the courthouse on Tuesday to reject the deal and seek the death penalty instead.

“I don’t think they should be left alive,” said Jeff Aston, the father of Daniel Aston, a bartender at Club Q who was killed in the shooting.

Tuesday’s verdict concludes the federal investigation into the Nov. 19, 2022, attack in which Aldrich entered Club Q and began firing into the crowd with an AR-15 rifle.

Aston (28), Raymond Green Vance (22), Ashley Paugh (35), Derrick Rump (38) and Kelly Loving (40) were killed in the shooting.

In court, Aldrich said the defendants are now taking at least five medications prescribed by a prison psychologist and that doctors have diagnosed them with a range of mental disorders, from depression and substance abuse to PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder.

Aldrich said they are not taking antipsychotic medications.

Defense attorneys described Aldrich as the product of an abusive upbringing, a person radicalized by the Internet and corrupted by drug abuse.

This is a developing story and will be updated