ABOVE: Anderson Aldrich appears in court. Screenshot via 9News/YouTube.
El Paso County, Colorado District Attorney Michael Allen announced Dec. 6 that the 22-year-old suspect in the mass shooting at Club Q, which killed five and wounded dozens of others, will face 305 charges including first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and bias-motivated crime.
The Colorado Springs Gazette newspaper reported Anderson Aldrich appeared in a Colorado Springs courtroom wearing a green jumpsuit and handcuffs. Aldrich’s facial bruising had significantly healed since a video hearing two weeks ago.
The total list of charges according to the Gazette follows:
- 10 counts of first-degree murder.
- 86 counts of attempted first-degree murder.
- 86 counts of first-degree assault.
- Four counts of second-degree assault.
- 48 counts of bias-motivated crime.
- 71 counts of violent crime causing death and using a weapon.
- Allen said the prosecution may request to amend the charges in the future.
“We are not going to tolerate actions against community members based on their sexual identity,” Allen said at a news conference after the hearing. “Members of that community have been harassed and intimated and abused for too long. And that’s not going to occur in the 4th Judicial District.”
During the hearing Judge Michael McHenry, following the filing of formal charges, granted a request from Allen for the suspect’s arrest affidavit to be unsealed. The court papers should be available to the public by the end of the day Wednesday, the judge noted according to the Gazette.
Allen said that while he couldn’t talk about what is in the affidavit, he told reporters that it might contain “much less information than you might expect.”
View video below via the region’s local NBC affiliate/YouTube.
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