The suspect in a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs gay nightclub is expected to strike a plea deal to state murder and hate charges that would ensure at least a life sentence for the attack that killed 5 people and wounded 17.
Word of a possible legal resolution of last year's Club Q massacre follows a series of jailhouse phone calls from the suspect to the Associated Press expressing remorse and the intention to face the consequences at the next scheduled court hearing this month.
"Someone's gone that can never be brought back through the justice system," said Wyatt Kent, who was celebrating his 23rd birthday in Club Q when Aldrich opened fire, gunning down Kent's partner, Daniel Aston, who was working behind the bar. "We are all still missing a lot, a partner, a son, a daughter, a best friend."
"No one has sympathy for him," said Michael Anderson, who was bartending at Club Q when the shooting broke out and ducked as several patrons were gunned down around him. "This community has to live with what happened, with collective trauma, with PTSD, trying to grieve the loss of our friends, to move past emotional wounds and move past what we heard, saw and smelled."
Aldrich, who since their arrest has identified as nonbinary and uses the pronouns they and them, allegedly visited Club Q at least six times in the years before the attack. District Attorney Michael Allen told a judge that the suspect's mother made Aldrich go to the club "against his will and sort of forced that culture on him."
Aldrich didn't answer directly when asked whether the attack was motivated by hate, saying only that's "completely off base." In that case, just months before the Club Q shooting, they threatened to become "the next mass killer" and stockpiled guns, ammo, body armor and a homemade bomb. In response to the Associated Press's letter, Aldrich first phoned a reporter in March and asked to be paid for an interview, a request that was declined. They called back late last month, days after prosecutors wrote in a court filing that there was "near-unanimous sentiment" among the victims for "the most expedient determination of case-related issues."
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