A year and a half before he was arrested in the Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooting that left five people dead, Anderson Lee Aldrich allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb, forcing neighbors in surrounding homes to evacuate while the bomb squad and crisis negotiators talked him into surrendering.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
Yet despite that scare, there's no public record that prosecutors moved forward with felony kidnapping and menacing charges against Aldrich, or that police or relatives tried to trigger Colorado's "red flag" law that would have allowed authorities to seize the weapons and ammo the man's mother says he had with him.
Gun control advocates say Aldrich's June 2021 threat is an example of a red flag law ignored, with potentially deadly consequences. While it's not clear the law could have prevented Saturday night's attack — such gun seizures can be in effect for as little as 14 days and extended by a judge in six-month increments — they say it could have at least slowed Aldrich and raised his profile with law enforcement.
"We need heroes beforehand — parents, co-workers, friends who are seeing someone go down this path," said Colorado state Rep. Tom Sullivan, whose son was killed in the Aurora theater shooting and sponsored the state's red flag law. "This should have alerted them, put him on their radar."
But the law that allows guns to be removed from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others has seldom been used in the state, particularly in El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs, where the 22-year-old Aldrich allegedly went into Club Q with a long gun just before midnight and opened fire before he was subdued by patrons.
An Associated Press analysis earlier this year found Colorado courts issued 151 gun surrender orders since the state's red flag law took effect in 2020, three surrender orders for every 100,000 adults in the state. That's a third of the average ratio of orders issued for the 19 states and District of Columbia with surrender laws on their books.
"It is the law in Colorado and law enforcement agencies in appropriate circumstances should take advantage of it," Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers said at a news conference Monday, though he cautioned against assuming that the facts of the bomb threat case would have warranted a use of the law.
El Paso County appears especially hostile to the law. It joined nearly 2,000 counties nationwide in declaring themselves "Second Amendment Sanctuaries" that protect the constitutional right to bear arms, passing a 2019 resolution that says the red flag law "infringes upon the inalienable rights of law-abiding citizens" by ordering police to "forcibly enter premises and seize a citizen's property with no evidence of a crime."
County Sheriff Bill Elder has said his office would wait for family members to ask a court for surrender orders and not petition for them on its own accord, unless there were "exigent circumstances." The county, with a population of 730,000, had 13 temporary firearm removals through the end of last year, four of which turned into longer ones of at least six months.
Ring doorbell video obtained by the AP shows Aldrich arriving at his mother's front door with a big black bag the day of the 2021 bomb threat, telling her the police were nearby and adding, "This is where I stand. Today I die." Two squad cars and what appears to be a bomb squad vehicle later pull up to the house, and a barefooted Aldrich emerges with his hands up.
Leslie Bowman, who owns the house where the mother lived and alerted police that day, said she was angry they didn't do more to monitor Aldrich after the incident.
"If the justice system had followed through with something, anything ... he wouldn't likely have had access to be able to get a weapon and five people wouldn't have died," Bowman said.
The county sheriff's office declined to answer what happened after Aldrich's arrest last year, including whether anyone asked to have his weapons removed. The press release issued by the sheriff's office at the time said no explosives were found but did not mention anything about whether any weapons were recovered.
An online court records search did not turn up any formal charges filed against Aldrich in last year's case. And in an update on a story on the bomb threat, The Gazette newspaper of Colorado Springs reported that prosecutors did not pursue any charges in the case and that records were sealed. El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen declined to talk about the bomb threat incident in Monday's news conference, citing a Colorado law forbidding comment on sealed cases.
Under that law, Allen said, criminal cases that are dismissed are automatically sealed but prosecutors can ask a court to unseal them if they are relevant to later crimes. He suggested that could happen in this case.
The Gazette reported Sunday that it got a voicemail message from Aldrich in August asking that it remove a story about the incident because "the entire case was dismissed. ... There is absolutely nothing there."
AP's study of 19 states and the District of Columbia with red flag laws on their books found they have been used about 15,000 times since 2020, less than 10 times for every 100,000 adults in each state. Experts called that woefully low and hardly enough to make a dent in gun killings.
Just this year, authorities in Highland Park, Illinois, were criticized for not trying to take guns away from the 21-year-old accused of a Fourth of July parade shooting that left seven dead. Police had been alerted about him in 2019 after he threatened to "kill everyone" in his home.
Duke University sociologist Jeffrey Swanson, an expert in red flag laws, said the Colorado Springs case could be yet another missed warning sign.
"This seems like a no brainer, if the mom knew he had guns," Swanson said. "If you removed firearms from the situation, you could have had a different ending to the story."
Meanwhile, in Virginia a Walmart manager pulled out a handgun before a routine employee meeting and began firing wildly around the break room of a Virginia store, killing six people in the nation's second high-profile mass shooting in four days, police and witnesses said Wednesday.
The gunman was dead when officers arrived late Tuesday at the store in Chesapeake, Virginia's second-largest city. Authorities said he apparently shot himself. Police were trying to determine a motive. One employee described watching "bodies drop" as the assailant fired haphazardly, without saying a word.
"He was just shooting all throughout the room. It didn't matter who he hit. He didn't say anything. He didn't look at anybody in any specific type of way," said Briana Tyler, a Walmart employee.
Six people were wounded in the shooting, which happened just after 10 p.m. as shoppers were stocking up ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Police said they believe about 50 people were in the store at the time. The gunman was identified as Andre Bing, 31, an overnight team leader who had been a Walmart employee since 2010. Police said he had one handgun and several magazines of ammunition.
Tyler said the overnight stocking team of 15 to 20 people had just gathered in the break room to go over the morning plan. She said the meeting was about to start, and one team leader said: "All right guys, we have a light night ahead of us." Then Bing turned around and opened fire on the staff.
At first, Tyler doubted the shooting was real, thinking that it was an active shooter drill.
"It was all happening so fast," she said, adding: "It is by the grace of God that a bullet missed me. I saw the smoke leaving the gun, and I literally watched bodies drop. It was crazy."
Police said three of the dead, including Bing, were found in the break room. One of the slain victims was found near the front of the store. Three others were taken to hospitals where they died. Tyler, who started working at Walmart two months ago and had worked with Bing just a night earlier, said she never had a negative encounter with him, but others told her he was "the manager to look out for." She said Bing had a history of writing people up for no reason.
"He just liked to pick, honestly. I think he just looked for little things ... because he had the authority. That's just the type of person that he was. That's what a lot of people said about him," she said.
Employee Jessie Wilczewski told Norfolk television station WAVY that she hid under the table, and Bing looked and pointed his gun at her. He told her to go home, and she left. Police said the dead included a 16-year-old boy whose name was being withheld because of his age. The other victims were identified as Brian Pendleton, 38; Kellie Pyle, 52; Lorenzo Gamble, 43; and Randy Blevins, 70, who were all from Chesapeake; and Tyneka Johnson, 22, of nearby Portsmouth.
It was not immediately clear whether they were workers or shoppers.
Pyle was a "lovely, generous and kind person," said Gwendolyn Bowe Baker Spencer, who said that her son and Pyle had plans to marry next year. Pyle had adult children in Kentucky who will be traveling to Virginia, Spencer said.
"We love her," Spencer said, adding: "She was an awesome, kind individual."
The attack was the second time in a little more than a week that Virginia has experienced a major shooting. Three University of Virginia football players were fatally shot on a charter bus as they returned to campus from a field trip on Nov. 13. Two other students were wounded.
The assault at the Walmart came days after the attack in Colorado and last spring, the country was shaken by the deaths of 21 when a gunman stormed an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Tuesday night's shooting also brought back memories of another attack at a Walmart in 2019, when a gunman who targeted Mexicans opened fire at a store in El Paso, Texas, and killed 22 people.
A database run by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University that tracks every mass killing in America going back to 2006 shows that the US has now had 40 mass killings so far in 2022. That compares with 45 for all of 2019, the highest year in the database, which defines a mass killing as at least four people killed, not including the killer. According to the database, more than a quarter of the mass killings have occurred since Oct. 21, spanning eight states and claiming 51 lives. Nine of those 11 incidents were shootings.
President Joe Biden tweeted that he and the first lady were grieving, adding: "We mourn for those who will have empty seats at their Thanksgiving table because of these tragic events."
Kimberly Shupe, mother of Walmart employee Jalon Jones, told reporters her 24-year-old son was shot in the back. She said he was in good condition and talking Wednesday, after initially being placed on a ventilator. Shupe said she learned of the shooting from a friend, who went to a family reunification center to learn Jones' whereabouts.
"If he's not answering his phone, he's not answering text messages and there's a shooting at his job, you just kind of put two and two together," Shupe said. "It was shock at first, but ultimately, I just kept thinking, 'he's going to be all right.'"
Walmart said in a statement that it was working with law enforcement and "focused on doing everything we can to support our associates and their families."
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
In the aftermath of the El Paso shooting, the company made a decision in September 2019 to discontinue sales of certain kinds of ammunition and asked that customers no longer openly carry firearms in stores. It stopped selling handgun ammunition as well as short-barrel rifle ammunition, such as the .223 caliber and 5.56 caliber used in military style weapons.
The company stopped selling handguns in the mid-1990s in every state but Alaska, where sales continued until 2019. The changes marked a complete exit from that business and allowed Walmart to focus on hunting rifles and related ammunition only. Many of its stores are in rural areas where hunters depend on Walmart to get their equipment.
Tyler's grandfather, Richard Tate, said he dropped his granddaughter off for her 10 p.m. shift, then parked the car and went in to buy some dish soap. When he first heard the shots, he thought it could be balloons popping. But he soon saw other customers and employees fleeing, and he ran too. Tate reached his car and called his granddaughter.
"I could tell that she was upset," he said. "But I could also tell that she was alive."
