Where was the gay bar shooting

The sentencing of Anderson Lee Aldrich comes just seven months after the shooting and spares victims' families and survivors a long and potentially painful trial. Aldrich, who declined to address the court prior to sentencing, pleaded guilty to five counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder.

Aldrich also pleaded no contest to two hate crimes, one a felony and the other a misdemeanor. The guilty plea comes just seven months after the shooting and spares victim's families and survivors a long and potentially painful trial. People in the shooting wiped away tears as Judge Michael McHenry explained the charges and read out the names of the victims.

Relatives and friends of victims were able to give statements in court to remember their loved ones and survivors spoke about how their lives were forever altered just before midnight on Nov. The father of a Club Q bartender said Daniel Aston had been in the prime of his life when he was shot and killed. The shooter's body shook slightly as the victims and family members spoke.

The defendant also looked down and glanced occasionally at a screen showing photos of the victims. The guilty plea follows a series of jailhouse phone calls from the shooter to The Associated Press expressing remorse and the intention to face the consequences for the shooting. Several survivors told the AP about the plea agreement after being approached about the shooter's comments to AP.

They said prosecutors had notified them that the shooter, who is nonbinary and uses they and them pronouns, would plead guilty to charges that would ensure a sentence of life behind bars. The shooter originally was charged with more than state counts, including murder and hate crimes.

The U. Justice Department is considering pursuing federal hate crime charges, according to a senior law enforcement official familiar with the matter who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing case. The line to get through security early Monday snaked through the large plaza outside the courthouse as victims and others queued up to attend the hearing.

The attack at Club Q came over a year after the shooter had been arrested for threatening their grandparents and vowing to become "the next mass killer. However, the charges against the shooter were thrown out in Was after Aldrich's mother and grandparents, the victims in the case, refused to cooperate with prosecutors, evading efforts to serve them with subpoenas to testify, according to court documents unsealed after the shooting.

Xavier Kraus, a former neighbor, told CBS Colorado that the suspect got their guns back following the incident. It's the people behind the gun. The shooter was released from jail then and authorities kept two guns - a ghost gun pistol and an MM15 rifle - gay in the arrest. But there was nothing to stop the shooter from legally purchasing where firearms, bar questions immediately after the shooting about whether authorities should have sought a red flag order to prevent such purchases.

The El Paso County Sheriff's Office said it would not have been able to seek a court order stopping the shooter the buying or possessing guns because the arrest record was sealed after the charges were dropped.

Slovakia: Two dead after shooting outside LGBT bar

There was no new evidence that they could use to prove that Aldrich posed a threat "in the near future," the sheriff's office said. Investigators later revealed that the two guns the shooter had during the Club Q attack - the rifle and a handgun - appeared to be ghost guns, or firearms without serial numbers that are homemade and do not require an owner to pass a background check.

The shooter told AP in one of the interviews from jail they were on a "very large plethora of drugs" and abusing steroids at the time of the attack. But they did not answer directly regarding the hate crimes charges. When asked whether the attack was motivated by hate, Aldrich said only that was "completely off base.

Some survivors who listened to the recorded phone calls saw the shooter's comments as an attempt to avoid the death penalty which still exists in the federal system.