Colorado governor on fatal shooting at LGBTQ nightclub: ‘This was just a place of safety for people’

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) on Sunday said the motivation of the gunman who killed five people at an LGBTQ nightclub over the weekend remained unclear, calling it an “act of evil.”

“This was just a place of safety for people,” Polis said during an appearance on “CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta.” 

“It was a place where people could, in a conservative community, often get the acceptance that too many of them might not have had it at home or in their other circles and to see this occur is really just put us all in a state of shock here in Colorado and across the country,” Polis added.

Police say Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, entered Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colo., shortly before midnight on Saturday night and immediately began shooting before two people confronted and stopped him.

Polis, who became the first openly gay man to be elected governor in the United States in 2018, told Acosta he had spoken with those individuals.

“I want to thank the Colorado Springs police department, responding within minutes of the call,” Polis said. “But, yes, the carnage would have been worse if not for the heroic acts that occurred. And I’m confident in the coming hours and days we’ll have a more detailed timeline to express our gratitude more specifically.”

Last June, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office said it responded to a report of a bomb threat in Colorado Springs involving an individual whose name and age match the suspect in the nightclub shooting.

The individual was booked on two counts of felony menacing and three counts of first-degree kidnapping, although police did not find any explosive devices and no charges were formally filed.

“Everything that I’ve heard indicates it is the same person,” Polis said on CNN. “We don’t yet know the motivation for this particular attack. But there is no good motivation, right? I mean, this is an act of evil, a horrific act, whether they were targeted because it was an LGBTQ gathering place, or whether it was targeted for other personal reasons. We simply don’t know that at this hour.”