‘Lock This Animal Away’: Club Q Mass Shooter Sentenced to Over 2200 Years in Prison After Killing Five at LGBTQ Nightclub
Club Q, a Colorado LGBTQ nightclub, and wounding 19 others with an AR-15 style assault rifle last year has been sentenced by a judge to life in prison, including over 2200 years behind bars.“Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, was sentenced Monday to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the 2022 massacre at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado,” CNN reports.“Judge Michael McHenry also sentenced Aldrich to an additional 2,208 years in prison for the attempted murder charges. Aldrich also received a four-year sentence for bias-motivated charges, which are akin to hate-crime charges in other states.”RELATED: Watch: Club Q Owner Testifies Before Congress About ‘Hundreds’ of Messages of Hate He Received After Anti-LGBTQ AttackColorado does not have the death penalty.Unarmed patrons in the club took Aldrich down.Cheryl Norton, whose daughter Ashtin Gamblin survived after being shot nine times, urged Judge McHenry, “Please your honor, I’m pleading with you: Lock this animal away to the depths of hell.”Extremism expert Mark Pitcavage on Monday noted Aldrich “had prominently featured on his website an accelerationist white supremacist video urging killings and terrorist attacks.”Calling it “one of the worst mass killings in Colorado history,” NBC News adds that “Aldrich, 23, who identifies as nonbinary and uses Mx.