Club Q victims will sue sheriff for letting alleged shooter buy a gun

Victims of the November 2022 mass shooting at Colorado’s Club Q plan to sue the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office for not issuing a red flag order to prevent the shooter, Anderson Aldrich, from buying guns used in the massacre.

The mass shooting occurred days before Thanksgiving last year, killing 5 and injuring 22.

Related Stories Woman threatened businesses with violence in the wake of the Club Q shooting. She got arrested.

She allegedly said she’d “shoot your bar up” just after that happened at Club Q.

Eleven survivors and family members of victims filed the notices of claim in May, which were first reported by the Colorado Springs Indy. The victims will seek more than $160 million in damages.  

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“Members of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office negligently and unconscionably played a role in Anderson Aldrich possessing and using firearms inside Club Q,” one notice of claim reads.

The claims say the shooting could have been prevented had the sheriff issued a red flag order for Aldrich following their arrest in 2021, when they threatened to kill their grandparents and become “the next mass shooter.”

Aldrich identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, according to their lawyers.

In Colorado, a red flag order (also known as extreme risk protection order) allows authorities to seize a person’s guns for up to a year if a judge finds that person presents an immediate threat to themselves or others.

But in 2019, El Paso County commissioners declared the county a “Second Amendment Preservation County” just as state lawmakers passed the red flag law. The sheriff at the time, Bill Elder, issued a blanket refusal to use extreme risk protection orders except in “exigent circumstances.”

Aldrich, 23, faced felony charges connected to their 2021 arrest, when authorities seized a 9 mm “ghost gun,” an AR-15 as well as bomb-making materials.

While Elder failed to issue a red flag order in that case — despite Aldrich’s declaration that he wanted to kill — the two weapons seized were never returned, according to District Attorney Michael Allen. Aldrich’s felony charges prevented him from buying weapons legally.

But just months before the shooting at Club Q, when the felony charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, Aldrich was free to buy and possess guns again.

Shortly after the shooting, the sheriff’s office said they didn’t issue a red flag for Aldrich when their case was dropped because the threats made by the shooter a year earlier no longer implied a danger “in the near future,” as required by law.

Aldrich used a newly purchased AR-15-style rifle and a handgun in the Club Q shooting. During the shooting, Richard Fierro — a straight, 15-year Iraq and Afghanistan military veteran — tackled the Aldrich and beat them bloody with Aldrich’s own handgun while another patron – identified as either a drag queen or a transgender woman – stomped her high heels into the gunman’s body.

Aldrich’s case and the sheriff’s refusal to use the red flag law prompted state lawmakers to revise the provision this year to allow prosecutors, health providers, and educators to seek extreme risk protection orders, in addition to law enforcement and family members.