COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Law enforcement officials investigating the Club Q shootings on Sunday said suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich's “interactions with law enforcement” are part of the broader investigation.
The El Paso County Sheriff's Office arrested a man with the same name and matching age in June 2021 in connection to a bomb threat that forced residents in a Lorson Ranch neighborhood in southeast Colorado Springs to evacuate from their homes for about three hours, according to an earlier report by the El Paso County Sheriff's Office.
No formal charges were pursued in the case, which has since been sealed, the 4th Judicial District Attorney's Office told The Gazette, after Aldrich called an editor in August and asked that the story on The Gazette's website be removed since the case was dropped.
"There is absolutely nothing there, the case was dropped, and I'm asking you either remove or update the story," Aldrich said in a voice message to The Gazette.
"The entire case was dismissed," he said.
Officials on Sunday would not confirm that 22-year-old Aldrich was the same man arrested in 2021, however Howard Black, spokesman for District Attorney's Office, said last year's incident will be part of the investigation of Saturday's mass shooting.
The man’s mother reported the bomb threat to law enforcement, saying her son had made threats with a homemade bomb, several weapons and ammunition and she did not know where he was, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Deborah Mynatt said in a press release at the time.
Sheriff's deputies evacuated an area encompassing a quarter-mile radius around the 6300 block of Pilgrimage Road, which was roughly a mile from the address they responded to, after they made contact with the man and he refused to comply with deputies' orders.
Eventually, negotiators were able to get the man to come out of the house he was in, and deputies took him into custody.
The sheriff's office said the man was accused of two counts of felony menacing and three counts of first-degree kidnapping.
The earlier arrest could raise questions about why Colorado's new red flag didn't come into play in Aldrich's case.
The new law, now in effect for nearly 19 months, is supposed to give law enforcement agencies and concerned family members a powerful tool to help prevent mass shootings.
The statute allows law enforcement officers or private citizens to petition a county court to confiscate firearms temporarily from people who pose an imminent threat to themselves or others.
El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder, an opponent of the law, at one point threatened to sue the state if the red flag statute became law. No lawsuit was filed however, and Elder later made clear that El Paso County deputies will carry out the law.
The Colorado Springs Police Department has filed two of the state's 348 red flag petitions since the law went into effect.
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