The Colorado gay nightclub shooting suspect boasted during a bomb threat last year about plans to become “the next mass killer,” according to sealed documents verified by the AP. But authorities dropped all charges and didn’t try to take away any guns.
“You guys die today and I’m taking you with me,” they quoted Aldrich as saying. “I’m loaded and ready.”
“It makes no sense,” said Jerecho Loveall, a former Club Q dancer who is recovering from a wound to the leg from one of the high-powered rounds. “If they would have taken this more seriously and done their job, the lives we lost, the injuries we sustained and the trauma this community has faced would not have happened.”
Criminal defense lawyers with whom AP shared the law enforcement documents say they questioned why charges were not pursued in the 2021 incident given the grandparents’ detailed statements, a tense standoff at the mother’s home and a subsequent house search that found bomb-making materials that Aldrich claimed had enough firepower to blow up an entire police department and a federal building.
Such a troubling case — dropped or not — could still have been used to trigger Colorado’s “red flag” law, which allows family members or law enforcement to ask a judge to order a removal of guns for a year from people dangerous to themselves or others, with possible extensions based on subsequent hearings.But an AP review of court records shows neither Aldrich’s grandparents nor mother went to a judge to get such an order.
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