The mother of a trans victim killed in the Colorado Springs shooting has demanded lawmakers to stand up for the queer community in the US.
“We need to get our legislators and our people high up to have a voice for us,” Sabrina Aston, the mother of 28-year-old victim Daniel Aston, was quoted as saying by Colorado Public Radio (CPR). “Those are our children, we do not care how you dress or what you identify as. It doesn’t harm anybody.”
Mr Aston was one of the five people killed during a shooting at Club Q on Saturday along with his co-worker Derrick Rump. Both worked as bartenders at the gay nightclub.
The police and the district attorney’s office have named 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich as a suspect in the incident, in which about 25 others were injured.
The comments from the victim’s mother come as president Joe Biden decried the “senseless” violence, reiterating his belief that the US must reinstitute an assault weapons ban after it emerged that an AR-15 was used in a mass shooting once again.
He added that while police had yet to officially name a motive for the suspect’s rampage, it was clear that LGBT+ establishments and individual Americans were facing a wave of renewed hate from the far right.
“Places that are supposed to be safe spaces of acceptance and celebration should never be turned into places of terror and violence. Yet it happens far too often. We must drive out the inequities that contribute to violence against LGBTQI+ people. We cannot and must not tolerate hate,” said the president.
A Club Q worker also paid tribute to the two workers by sharing their pictures on Facebook. “My boys are gone. Plz (sic) take care of each other. I love you both so much,” the worker was quoted as saying in a social media post by The Mirror.
"Two beautiful souls were taken from us last night. Daniel Aston and Derrick Rump you both will be missed so much it hurts,” the outlet quoted one of Mr Rump’s friends as saying. “I didn’t [know] Daniel personally but I know he was an amazing person with a big heart and had seen him active in the community and he’s loved by some of my friends so my heart hurts for them.”
According to Mr Aston’s mother, he started living a life as a transgender man and began taking hormones shortly after college. “I always worried about it,” she said. “He’s a trans man and the trans community are really the biggest targets I can think about it right now,” Ms Aston told CPR as she shared her concerns.
His fatherJeff Aston, added, “but you try not to think about those things too much”.
The parents told the outlet they were proud of him and his success at work. “He was thriving and having fun and having friends. It’s just unbelievable,” Ms Aston said. “He had so much more life to give to us and to all his friends and to himself.”
A friend of their son called them on the night of the shooting, at around 2am from the Memorial Hospital to inform them about the killing. However, when they reached the hospital, they were not able to find any records of him.
A few hours later, a detective came to their home, and Ms Aston knew.
“I didn’t want to be part of this, the losing a child [in a] club, you know?” she said. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.”
