The gunman who allegedly killed five people and injured at least 25 others at a Colorado Springs gay bar on Saturday has been identified as Anderson Lee Aldrich. He is also the grandson of outgoing California State Assembly member Randy Voepel, a pro-Trump MAGA Republican who once said the GOP had become too liberal for him, according to LGBTQ Nation.
Voepel, a former mayor of Santee, California — a suburb in San Diego County — was highly criticized after he praised the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, comparing it to the Revolutionary War. "This is Lexington and Concord. First shots fired against tyranny," he said after the Capitol riot, predicting that tyranny would "follow in the aftermath of the Biden swear in on January 20th."
Voepel "lost his bid for reelection in the August Republican primary," says LGBTQ Nation.
As for Voepel's grandson, this wasn't Aldrich's first time in trouble with the law.
From LGBTQ Nation:
According to multiple news outlets, Aldrich was previously arrested in 2021 and charged with five felonies after threatening his mother with a homemade bomb and multiple weapons. The threat resulted in a standoff with police. The New York Times reports that police were unable to find any explosives at the time, and Aldrich was never prosecuted.
Leslie Bowman, who had been renting a spare room to Aldrich's mother at the time, expressed outrage following Saturday's mass shooting that he had been allowed access to firearms.
"Why is he not in jail, after that happening?" she said of the 2021 arrest. "After that initial day, police never reached out to me for additional information. I'm a Second Amendment supporter, don't get me wrong. But for him to be out there, and have access to weapons after that incident, I don't understand it."
The Club Q mass shooting is being treated as a possible hate crime.
