Colorado Springs shooting suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich live-streamed a confrontation with police in July 2021 where the then-21-year-old threatened to blow a house to “holy hell”.
“This is your boy, I’ve got the f***ing s***heads outside, they’ve got a beat on me,” Aldrich says in footage obtained by The Gazette, which shows the suspect armed with a rifle and wearing body armour.
“If they breach I’m going to blow it to holy hell.”
According to a statement from El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, Aldrich was arrested last year after the 22-year-old’s mother Laura Voepel called police to report her son had threatened her with a homemade bomb.
Ring camera footage shows Aldrich emerging from the house after an hours-long standoff with police.
The sheriff’s office said Aldrich was charged with felony menacing and three counts of third-degree kidnapping.
No charges were formally laid against Aldrich, and the file has since been sealed, a local assistant attorney told The Gazette.
Gun control advocates told the Associated Press that the incident should have triggered Colorado’s red flag gun laws, that would have allowed law enforcement to confiscate any weapons belonging to the gunman.
“We need heroes beforehand — parents, co-workers, friends who are seeing someone go down this path,” Colorado state lawmaker Tom Sullivan, whose son was killed in the Aurora theater shooting, said.
“This should have alerted them, put him on their radar.”
Police say Aldrich took an AR-style rifle and handgun to the LGBTQ venue Club Q on Saturday night and opened fire, killing five and wounding 18 others.
The case will form part of the investigation into the mass shooting, a spokesman for the district attorney told The Gazette.
The video live stream appears to have been broadcast on to the Facebook account of Laura Voepel, the suspect’s mother.
It was provided to several media outlets by the owner of the house.
The Gazette also published details of a conversation that Aldrich had with one of their reporters after the bomb threat incident.
Aldrich contacted the newsroom and left a voicemail to say the story was “libelous” and that the charges had been dropped.
When a reporter phoned Aldrich back, the suspect asked that the story be removed as it could harm their chances of finding employment.
