Alleged gunman Anderson Lee Aldrich shot at least 25 people, killing 5, at a gay and lesbian nightclub in Colorado Springs, CO late Saturday night.
Law enforcement has not officially established a motive for the mass shooting, though it’s being investigated to see if it should be prosecuted as a hate crime.
The venue, Club Q, thanked the “quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack.”
News sources have stated that a man with the same name and age was arrested in 2021 after his mother reported to authorities that he threatened her with a “homemade bomb, multiple weapons and ammunition.”
As AP reports, the shooting came during Transgender Awareness Week and hours before Sunday’s International Transgender Day of Remembrance.
Sarah Kate Ellis, the president of GLAAD, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, stated on Twitter, “you can draw a straight line from the false and vile rhetoric about LGBTQ people spread by extremists and amplified across social media, to the nearly 300 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year, to the dozens of attacks on our community just like this one.”
After two nightclub patrons reportedly subdued Aldrich, 22, he was taken into custody and hospitalized for injuries he sustained.