The Case of the Injured Gunman Anderson Aldrich at a Los Alamos Club in Colorado Springs, California, During the 2021 Shooting
The suspect in the mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado had a tumultuous upbringing in which he was bullied as a teenager and raised for a time by his grandmother, according to an emerging portrait of the alleged gunman pieced together by CNN.
Anderson Aldrich’s relatives and the grandparents who claimed to have been kidnapped had told Judge Robin Chittum in August last year that he would need treatment or his mental illness would get worse.
The charges against Aldrich were thrown out this past July after the prosecution didn’t even argue during the four-minute hearing.
Five people were killed and a dozen were injured when Aldrich opened fire at Club Q in Colorado Springs a little over a year after the bomb threat. Aldrich is accused of murder and bias-motivated crime, and is currently in the El Paso County Court. The suspect had been taken to the hospital for treatment of injuries he received when he was subdued by club patrons.
According to court documents, an porn actor and a mixed martial arts fighter were both imprisoned for the same offense.
Brink pleaded guilty to a domestic battery charge in 1999, and was given a suspended sentence, according to the court. Federal court records state that the victim in that case was Voepel, who was described as his girlfriend.
When Aldrich’s grandparents made plans to move to Florida, the suspect became despondent. Leading up to the 2021 confrontation with authorities, Aldrich started drinking liquor regularly and smoking heroin, dropped out of school and quit working, the transcript shows.
The 2010 Sacramento County, California, Count Court Record of a Mental Health Treatment Supremum for a Teen with Borderline Personality Disorder
In 2010, Voepel underwent court-ordered mental health treatment in Riverside County, California that stemmed from those cases, according to court records obtained by CNN.
The records show Voepel sought custody of her then-10-year-old son – the age Aldrich would have been at the time. A document filed later noted that Voepel said her son had begun living with her and that she planned to seek medical, welfare and food stamp assistance.
She was accused of starting a fire in her room at the Baptist Medical Center in San Antonio by using a lighter. Voepel, who was rescued by a hospital staffer, initially denied setting the fire, but security footage showed that she was the only person in her room when the blaze began, according to the police report.
Records show that a licensed psychologist concluded that she was suffering from severe borderline personality disorder and alcohol dependence. According to court documents, she was originally charged with arson, but pleaded no contest to a reduced offense of criminal mischief in August 2013. She was sentenced to five years of community supervision.
As a teenager, Aldrich tried to join the military but decided it wouldn’t happen, according to transcripts. The suspect described refusing to take medications and then “getting on track” after moving to Colorado, obtaining a medical marijuana license and starting college, according to the transcripts.
A Bullying Page About the Colorado Springs, Colo., teen who changed his name in 2015 and surrendered to sheriff’s deputies
A history of revisions on the page shows that the bullying posts about him were updated several times over a five-month period in 2015. The Washington Post reported that the page is still active.
Later that same year, just before his 16th birthday, the teen legally changed his name from Nicholas F. Brink to Anderson Lee Aldrich. A reason for the name change was not given, as reported by The Post.
Aldrich later surrendered to sheriff’s deputies, which was seen in other video footage previously reported by CNN. The sheriff’s office said no explosives were found in the house.
A brief video shows a young man wearing helmet and body armor, challenging law enforcement to break down the door of a house where he was holed up.
Aldrich’s statements in the bomb case raised questions about whether authorities could have used Colorado’s “red flag” law to seize weapons from the suspect.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The bomb threat case against the Colorado Springs nightclub shooting suspect was dropped due to family members not cooperating, according to the documents.
In a letter last November to state District Court Judge Robin Chittum, the relatives painted a picture of an isolated, violent person who did not have a job and was given $30,000 that was spent largely on the purchase of 3D printers to make guns.
On the case of Michael D. Chittum, the defendant’s father, and other relatives, and the failure of a red flag order
Aldrich tried to reclaim guns that were seized after the threat, but authorities did not return the weapons, El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen said.
Allen spoke hours after Chittum unsealed the case, which included allegations that Aldrich threatened to kill the grandparents and to become the “next mass killer” more than a year before the nightclub attack that killed five people.
After the suspect’s mother and grandparents tried to keep prosecutors away from them, the case was dropped and the trial rules were at risk, Allen said.
The mother and grandmother of the suspect described him as a loving and sweet person who did not deserve to be jailed, according to the prosecutor.
The former district attorney who was replaced by Allen told The Associated Press he faced many cases in which people dodged subpoenas, but the inability to serve Aldrich’s family seemed extraordinary.
“I don’t know that they were hiding, but if that was the case, shame on them,” Dan May said of the suspect’s family. “This is an extreme example of apparent manipulation that has resulted in something horrible.”
The judge’s order comes after news organizations, including the AP, sought to unseal the documents, and two days after AP published portions of the documents that were verified with a law enforcement official.
Chittum granted a defense attorney’s request to drop the case as a trial deadline neared after he was warned by relatives of Aldrich that he would commit murder if freed.
According to documents, Grandmother Pamela Pullen said through an attorney that she had a subpoena in her mailbox but never personally or properly served it.
There is scant discussion in the transcripts of efforts by prosecutors to subpoena other potential witnesses — including Aldrich’s mother, grandfather and a fourth person who is listed in court documents but not identified.
According to documents in the case, the suspect’s grandmother gave $30,000 to Aldrich to purchase two 3D printers that he was making guns out of.
The El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder said Thursday that there was no need for a red flag order because Aldrich’s weapons had already been seized.
The sheriff also rejected the idea that he could have asked for a red flag order after the case was dismissed. The bombing case was too old to argue there was danger in the near future, Elder said, and the evidence was sealed a month after the dismissal and couldn’t be used.
Under Colorado law, records are automatically sealed when a case is dropped and defendants are not prosecuted, as happened in Aldrich’s 2021 case. Once sealed, officials cannot acknowledge that the records exist, and the process to unseal the documents initially happens behind closed doors with no docket to follow and an unnamed judge.
Chittum said the public interest in the case was more important than the privacy rights of Aldrich. The judge added that scrutiny of judicial cases is “foundational to our system of government.”
The city of Colorado Springs. A judge dismissed the 2021 kidnapping case against the Colorado gay nightclub shooter even though she had previously raised concerns about the defendant stockpiling weapons and explosives and planning a shootout, court transcripts obtained Friday by The Associated Press reveal.
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said transcripts of court hearings in the case confirmed his view that “more could have been done to prevent the violence.”
While judges are supposed to be umpires, they’re usually more aggressive in cases like this because of the way the handwriting is on the wall.
“You clearly have been planning for something else,” Chittum told Aldrich during the August 2021 hearing, after the defendant testified about an affinity for shooting firearms and a history of mental health problems.
It couldn’t have been with your grandpa and grandma. It was saving all these firearms and trying to make this bomb, and making statements about other people being involved in some sort of shootout and a huge thing. And then that’s kind of what it turned into,” the judge said.
The transcript shows that Aldrich spoke to Chittum in court about being abused as a child by their father as well as struggles with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The 2021 case of Aldrich went to the shooting range east of Colorado Springs, according to the Denver Public Liensing Observer
Studies show that the vast majority of people who have mental illnesses are not violent, and experts agree that most people that are violent do not have mental illnesses. Additionally, nonbinary people and advocates warn against making assumptions about people with nontraditional gender identities.)
Aldrich testified that he went to the shooting range as far back as he could remember. “My mom and I used to go and have fun shooting a few times a week.” This is a big part of my life. Going to school, working and then relaxing at a shooting range.
Aldrich said that they went to the Dragonman’s shooting range east of Colorado Springs, which had a dirt driveway lined with mannequins that looked bloodied. There were some vehicles with bullet holes. Two people who appeared to work at the range said they did not know Aldrich and declined further comment.
The prosecution was the responsibility solely of the district attorney, said Ian Farrell, associate professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, noting that judges like Chittum have no power to force charges.
“Since a deadline for proceeding with (Aldrich’s) trial was coming up and the prosecution clearly was not ready to proceed … Farrell said the judge had no choice but to dismiss the case.
Farrell said judges can appoint special prosecutors in extreme circumstances, when the decision not to prosecute is made in bad faith. The 2021 case did not rise to that bar because witnesses were unavailable, he said.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/17/1143831958/club-q-shooting-suspect-judge-earlier-warning-colorado-springs
Apparently Aldrich didn’t tell his grandparents to go out in a blaze, but a Minneapolis man idolized by an FBI informant was arrested
During the 2021 standoff, Aldrich allegedly told the frightened grandparents about firearms and bomb-making material in the basement of the home they all shared. Aldrich said not to let the grandparents interfere with the plan to go out in a blaze.
Although authorities missed some warning signs about Aldrich’s capability for violence, the opposite happened across the country in Minnesota this week, where a man who said he idolized Aldrich was arrested after trying to buy grenades from an FBI informant and building an arsenal of automatic weapons to use against police, according to charges.