The shooter who killed five people in a 2022 attack at a Colorado gay nightclub is due to plead guilty to federal hate crime and gun charges Tuesday and be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Anderson Lee Aldrich, 24, has already been sentenced to life in prison after admitting to state murder charges in a separate prosecution last year for the attack on Club Q in Colorado Springs, reports Reuters. Aldrich has agreed to plead guilty to 74 federal charges for planning and carrying out the attack at the club with a semiautomatic rifle on Nov. 19, 2022, during a drag show. Five people were killed and more than a dozen others injured before two patrons managed to wrest Aldrich's gun away.
Aldrich will be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Denver. Aldrich's attorneys and federal prosecutors agreed that federal sentencing guidelines require multiple concurrent sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole and a consecutive sentence of 190 years in prison. The most serious crimes to which Aldrich will plead guilty are charges of willfully killing someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
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