On Tuesday, June 18, Anderson Aldrich, who shot visitors to an LGBT club in Colorado, USA, two years ago, was sentenced to 55 life sentences and another 190 years in prison. UNN reports this with reference to the BBC.
Details
The 24-year-old man made a deal with the prosecution and pleaded guilty to dozens of charges. This allowed him to avoid the death penalty.
District Judge Charlotte Sweeney, announcing the verdict, recalled that Anderson Aldrich, among other things, admitted that he opened fire on the club's visitors because of "their real or perceived gender identity and sexual orientation".
Anderson Aldrich, according to his lawyers, considers himself a non-binary (rejecting the strict division of people into two genders) person and refers to himself with the pronoun "they," which in modern English is used, in particular, when the gender of the person in question is unknown.
Aldrich himself had repeatedly visited Club Q in Colorado Springs, where he opened fire on November 19, 2022, killing five people and injuring 19 others.
Prosecutors at the trial said that Aldrich had previously spoken hatefully about people from the LGBT community and the police.