A Colorado Springs detective testified Wednesday that Club Q suspect ran an anti-LGBTQ website and used slurs before the shooting in November.
The Washington Post reported that detective Rebecca Joines testified during the first day of a preliminary hearing that Anderson Lee Aldrich sent a photo of a rifle scope aimed over a Pride parade to a contact on Discord. She also said that Aldrich was an administrator on a website that had clips of mass shootings and neo-Nazi training videos.
Aldrich is charged with murder and hate crimes in the shooting where five people were killed and at least 18 injured. It was the worse attack on an LGBTQ establishment since the Pulse shooting.
The Post reported that the state has to present evidence of a motive to support the hate crime charges. Aldrich’s lawyers have said they are nonbinary and use they/them pronouns, but they have referred to Aldrich with he and him.
Joines testified Wednesday that the two guns used in the shooting were privately manufactured and possibly made with an at-home kit. They did not have serial numbers and would not have required a background check, according to the newspaper.
Much of Wednesday’s hearing consisted of detective testimony recounting the crime scene, the newspaper reported. Aldrich sat in the courtroom hunched, at times wiping their face with a tissue, as the prosecutors projected graphic photographs from the scene of the shooting.