Club Q shooting suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich formally charged

The suspect in the mass shooting at an LGBTQ bar in Colorado Springs last month was charged Tuesday with 305 criminal counts, including first-degree murder, bias-motivated crimes and attempted murder.

Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, had been arrested and held on suspicion of five counts of first-degree murder and five hate-crime charges immediately after the Nov. 20 mass shooting at Club Q, but prosecutors did not bring formal criminal charges until Tuesday, which is normal under Colorado’s court process.

The charges against Aldrich also include sentence enhancers, online court records show, which allow prosecutors to pursue harsher penalties should he be convicted.

Aldrich was due to appear in a Colorado Springs courtroom on Tuesday morning.

Aldrich is accused of killing five people and wounding 17 others in the attack.  Five additional people were injured during the attack but not by gunfire, police have said.

The shooting suspect identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, their attorneys wrote in court filings.

During the attack, the suspect was beaten into submission by club patrons who stopped the mass shooting within minutes. Aldrich appeared in court via video for the first time Nov. 23 with a heavily bruised face. They spoke briefly with slurred speech and sat slumped over.