Club Q nightclub shooting: Five dead, 25 wounded, suspected gunman charged with murder
The porn star father of a man suspected of killing five people at a Colorado LGBTQ nightclub has gone on a shocking anti-gay rant in response to the mass shooting his son is accused of.
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The father of the suspect in a deadly mass shooting at a Colorado nightclub has told the victims’ families he is “so sorry for (their) loss”, while also claiming that he “do(es) n’t do gay”, in a shocking TV interview.
Aaron Brink, 48, bizarrely claimed during an interview with CBS 8- San Diego that his first concern upon learning his son Anderson Lee Aldrich allegedly killed five people at an LGBTQ establishment, was whether his child was homosexual.
“I was scared. I was like ‘Oh my god, s – t, is he gay?’ And he’s not gay,” he said with an exaggerated sigh of relief.
Mr Aldrich allegedly opened fire at Club Q in the US city of Colorado Springs on Saturday, killing five people and wounding 30. Several of the victims remain in a critical condition.
The assault, which ended when a US Army veteran pounced on the attacker, shattered a rare safe haven for the city’s tight-knit LGBTQ community.
Mr Brink, who lives in San Diego and has been estranged from Mr Aldrich for years, said he doesn’t support same-sex relationships.
“I’m a Mormon,” the former MMA fighter-turned-porn star told a reporter for the station. I’m a conservative Republican and we don’t do gay.”
He said Mr Aldrich’s lawyers called him and told him that his 22-year-old child was involved in the shooting, but he hadn’t spoken to them in six months.
“I don’t what he’s accused of. I can’t get answers from the attorneys really, but they’re saying it’s involving a gay bar. I don’t know what the heck he did at a gay bar,” Mr Brink said.
A CBS 8 reporter explained to Mr Brink that Mr Aldrich is accused of carrying out a mass shooting at a gay bar, killing five people and wounding many more.
“OK, well s – t, he’s accused of doing that, I’m glad he’s not gay. I can say that, I’m glad he’s not gay,” Mr Brink said in a shocking response.
Court filings in the mass shooting case revealed on Tuesday that Mr Aldrich claims to be nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. Their sexuality is unknown. Mr Brink added that he believes relationships should be between a man and a woman and that people “should stand up against homosexuality” — but not through violence, he noted.
“There’s no excuse for going and killing people … It’s not the answer,” Mr Brink told the local station.
He went on to express condolences to the victims’ families — saying regardless of politics, precious human lives were lost.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said.
“I’m so sorry.”
On Wednesday, Mr Aldrich appeared by video link at a court hearing, wearing orange jail garb.
No charges were levied, and no pleas entered.
The suspect has not been formally charged, but is being held without bond on suspicion of murder. Under Colorado’s judicial system, formal charges are not expected for another 10 days.
MASS SHOOTING SUSPECT’S CHILLING WORDS TO NEIGHBOUR
Earlier in the week, it emerged that Mr Aldrich also allegedly used anti-gay slurs and made a chilling remark to a neighbour before carrying out the attack.
Xavier Kraus told the Daily Beast that the accused killer enjoyed going with his mother, Laura Voepel, to a range where “rapid fire” was permitted.
Mr Kraus said he and Mr Aldrich previously discussed the dangers of firearms, and claimed the 22-year-old told him: “It’s not the gun you’ve got to be afraid of, it’s the people”.
He said Mr Aldrich “had this idea that we would go out at some point to a range and he (would) teach me some gun safety and go out and shoot some target practice.”
“We never ended up getting around to do that,” Mr Kraus told the outlet.
“But that conversation just kind of sits with me, because I know how I felt when I saw the gun and he showed it to me. He was like, ‘This is all legal. I’m totally allowed to have this.’ It was an assault-rifle type gun.”
Mr Kraus, who said he once considered the accused gunman a friend, also conceded that Mr Aldrich “said things sometimes that probably should have been alarming to me,” including a vile homophobic slur.
“He used the term ‘f — t’ a lot. Most of the time it came from a place of anger,” he added.
Mr Aldrich is now facing charges including five counts of first degree murder and five counts of “bias-motivated crime that caused bodily injury,” according to the online docket in El Paso County Courts.
Police say the alleged gunman, 22, entered the club and opened fire using a “long rifle.”
Colorado Springs Police Department Chief Adrian Vasquez said two firearms were found at the scene.
The gunman was taken into custody about five minutes after police received calls about the shooting at Club Q.
Chief Vasquez confirmed two heroic patrons confronted the gunman and stopped the shooting.
“At least two heroic people inside the club confronted and fought with the suspect and were able to stop the suspect from continuing to kill and harm others,” police chief Vasquez told a press conference.
“We owe them a great debt of thanks.”
According to witnesses, the gunman entered the club and immediately started firing.
Mr Aldrich remains in a local hospital.
SHOOTING VICTIMS WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IDENTIFIED
Friends and family have paid tribute to the people shot dead in Club Q, with some describing one of the innocents as “warm and generous”.
Authorities identified the dead as 28-year-old Club Q bartender Daniel Davis Aston, 38-year-old Club Q bartender Derrick Rump, 40-year-old Kelly Loving, 35-year-old mother Ashley Paugh and Raymond Green Vance.
Sabrina Aston said at age four, Daniel told her he was a boy. She said he found peace when he came out as transgender at 28, according to The Denver Post.
“It’s just unbelievable,” she said.
“He had so much more life to give to us, and to all his friends and to himself.”
Mr Rump was described as the “glue that held together the queer community in Colorado Springs”, reports The Washington Post.
His friends described him as “very sunshiny, warm and generous”.
It is understood he bought outfits for drag queens who couldn’t afford them and bought groceries for performers who lost their jobs during the pandemic.
A close friend of Ms Loving’s said “she was like a trans mother to me”.
Ms Paugh was described by her husband as a proud mother who was committed to her work helping find homes for foster children.
Mr Green’s partner wrote on Facebook: “My sweet baby. I’ll never be able to heal from this”.
‘I JUST WENT INTO COMBAT MODE’: HERO SPEAKS OUT
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers praised the heroes who helped pin down the gunman.
“I think in the opinion of everyone involved, (they) saved a lot of lives,” Mr Suthers said.
The mayor said he had spoken to one of the men – Richard Fierro, a 15-year veteran of the US Army, according to The New York Times.
“I have never encountered a person who had engaged in such heroic actions that was so humble about it,” Mr Suthers said.
“He simply said to me, ‘I was trying to protect my family.’”
In an interview with the Times, Mr Fierro said he was at the club with his wife, daughter and friends watching a drag show when the gunfire began.
Mr Fierro, 45, who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan during his military service, said he tackled the gunman by grabbing a handle on the back of his body armour, took his pistol and beat him with it.
“I don’t know exactly what I did, I just went into combat mode,” he said.
“I just know I have to kill this guy before he kills us.
“I grabbed the gun out of his hand and just started hitting him in the head, over and over,” he said.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Mr Fierro said he a “young man” and a drag queen assisted in trying to subdue the suspect.
“I told the kid in front of me, move the AR (semiautomatic weapon), get the AR away from him, and the kid did it,” he continued.
According to Mr Fierro, the alleged gunman kept “trying to wiggle and get his guns”, as the veteran kept “whaling on him”.
“I’m on top of (the suspect), and I’m a big dude, but this guy was bigger,” he added.
“I told the kid in front of me: ‘kick him in his head, keep kicking him in his head’, and I’m yelling: ‘somebody call 911’ while I’m beating this guy.
“And one of the (club) performers was running by and I told her: ‘kick this guy, kick this guy’, and she took her high heel and stuffed it in his face or his head or whatever she could hit.”
Mr Fierro detained the alleged gunman until police arrived and apprehended the suspect.
Mr Fierro said one of the dead included his daughter’s boyfriend, 22-year-old Raymond Vance.
Bartender Michael Anderson praised the patrons who overpowered the gunman.
“There were some very brave people beating him and kicking him, stopping him from causing more damage,” he said.
“They saved my life.”
SUSPECT KNOWN TO POLICE
More than a year ago, police confiscated firearms from Mr Aldrich, after he held his family hostage at gunpoint, according to the officials.
During the June 2021 incident, Mr Aldrich’s mother told police her son was threatening to hurt her with a homemade bomb, weapons and ammunition, according to an El Paso County Sheriff’s Office account of the incident at the time.
Mr Aldrich was arrested on two counts of felony menacing and three counts of first-degree kidnapping.
No explosives were ever found, the sheriff’s office said at the time.
It was unclear whether Mr Aldrich ever got the seized guns back, the two officials said.
According to one of the law-enforcement officials, officials never proceeded with the case. Ultimately, the case files were sealed, which is unusual for cases not involving juveniles, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Joshua Thurman of Colorado Springs was in the club at the time of the club shooting over the weekend.
“It was so scary,” he said in a video a local reporter posted to social media.
“I heard shots – broken glass – bodies – it was, ‘How?’ … ‘Why?”
“It was supposed to be our safe space.”
US President Joe Biden released a statement condemning the attack and, while he noted that the motive was not yet clear, slammed violence against the LGBTQ community, particularly transgender women of colour.
“We must drive out the inequities that contribute to violence against LGBTQI+ people. We cannot and must not tolerate hate,” he said.
Colorado Springs Police Department spokesperson Pamela Castro said medical teams and officers “did locate one individual who we believe to be the suspect inside,” adding that the suspect was in custody and being treated at a local hospital.
18 shot in a Colorado mass shooting inside a gay nightclub called Club Q. At least 5 people have been killed, that number is expected to rise. A suspect is in custody. #ColoradoSpringspic.twitter.com/1Q1XDxqEtp
— Joshua Jered (@Joshuajered) November 20, 2022
She said police received the first call about the shooting just before midnight Saturday, US time.
MOTIVE NOT KNOWN
In a statement on its Facebook page, Club Q sad it was “devastated by the senseless attack on our community”.
“We thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack.,” the statement said.
Police have as yet declined to speak about a possible motive for the shooting.
The attack came as partygoers appeared to gather for an event marking Transgender Day of Remembrance, held annually on November 20 to honour the memory of trans people who were killed in acts of transphobic violence.
The club had posted earlier on Saturday about an LGBTQ event starting at 8pm.
“We’re celebrating Transgender Day of Remembrance with a variety of gender identities and performance styles,” the post read.
#Breaking: Colorado Springs Police confirm five are dead and 18 injured in the Club Q shooting! pic.twitter.com/RZuP6cEaYp
— Brian Sherrod (@briansherrodtv) November 20, 2022
Colorado Springs Fire Captain Mike Smaldino said 11 ambulances responded to the scene after multiple 911 calls were received.
Dr. David J. Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a leading Black LGBTQ+ civil rights organisation, on the mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs said:
“When ignorance is weaponised to become hate, people suffer. When hate-filled people are without communities that love and support their ability to celebrate diversity, embrace democracy, and prioritise mental wellness, they can cause harm – to themselves and others. People die when hateful people have access to guns and live in communities and a country that prioritises people over weapons of mass destruction. We’ve seen this before, and sadly, it will continue to happen until we collectively do better.
“My thoughts and prayers are with everyone impacted by the shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado. My heart breaks for the victims and those processing the information that the lives of their loved ones have been stolen.
“The National Black Justice Coalition will continue advancing public policy that increases competence and compassion, provides access to high-quality and affordable mental health, and improves gun laws. While we work against the forces that seek to hoard power and preserve white supremacy, we exist as a resource to anyone seeking to learn more about ways to advance equity for LGBTQ+ people, families, and communities.”
The shooting is the latest in a long history of attacks on LGBTQ venues in the United States, the deadliest of them in Orlando, Florida, in 2016.
A gunman on June 12, 2016, killed 49 people inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
– with Maria Bervanakis, Hayley Goddard and AFP
Originally published as Club Q nightclub shooting: Five dead, 25 wounded, suspected gunman charged with murder
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