DENVER — Surveillance cameras inside and outside of Club Q captured the entirety of the mass shooting at the Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub, prosecutors said in court Friday.
Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen said prosecutors plan to play the video during the suspect’s next court hearing, scheduled for Feb. 22. The video shows the suspect, Anderson Aldrich, park their car outside the club, walk inside and fire the weapon, Allen said.
“It captured the entire event,” he said.
The video will shed light on how Aldrich acted inside the nightclub and how patrons were able to tackle Aldrich to the ground, stopping the bloodshed.
Aldrich, 22, is charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, bias-motivated crimes and attempted murder in connection with the Nov. 19 attack at the beloved LGBTQ nightclub. Five people were killed in the shooting: Daniel Aston, 28; Kelly Loving, 40; Ashley Paugh, 35; Derrick Rump, 38; and Raymond Green Vance, 22.
More than 20 other people were injured.
El Paso County District Court Judge Michael McHenry granted a motion prosecutors filed Monday to add 12 more charges to the 305 they’ve already filed against Aldrich. The new charges are based on alleged crimes against two newly identified victims, he said.
Aldrich’s attorneys asked McHenry to postpone the preliminary hearing set for Feb. 22 because they don’t anticipate having enough time to review evidence.
At the preliminary hearing, prosecutors will present evidence to McHenry, who will then decide whether there’s enough basis to support the charges and whether Aldrich should be allowed bond, which would allow for their potential release pending trial.
The defense team has been “completely overwhelmed” with evidence, said Joseph Archambault, chief trial deputy for the Colorado State Public Defender. The lawyers have received about 5,000 paper pages and 1.3 terabytes of digital video, audio and photos. They’re still uploading the evidence to their server, he said.
Both attorneys representing Aldrich have multi-week homicide trials to prepare for before the hearing, Archambault said.
“We will not have time to review this material,” he said, arguing that they would not be able to effectively represent Aldrich on that timeframe.
McHenry rejected Archambault’s request and said the defense attorneys have had time to talk with their supervisors about their workload. If they do not have time, McHenry said, the public defender’s office should assign different attorneys.
Archambault requested that if the preliminary hearing were to proceed as scheduled, prosecutors assist by helping the defense team identify the evidence that supports the bias-motivated crime charges against Aldrich.
“We haven’t found anything like that,” he said.
Allen replied that the evidence was contained in interviews with people who described previous conversations with Aldrich as well as in data recovered from Aldrich’s phone.
Prosecutors have not said exactly what prompted them to file hate-crime charges against Aldrich. The arrest warrant did not specify any suspected motivation for the shooting.
