Records show judge Robin Chittum warned in 2021 of Anderson Aldrich's plans for mass attack

READ MORE

Club Q shooter Anderson Aldrich charged with 305 counts including murder, hate crimes and assault

Club Q massacre: Heroic patrons snatched shooter's gun, pinned him down till cops arrived

Aldrich was warned by Judge Robin Chittum, "You clearly have been planning for something else," during a hearing in August 2021. "It didn’t have to do with your grandma and grandpa," Chittum noted. "It was saving all these firearms and trying to make this bomb, and making statements about other people being involved in some sort of shootout and a huge thing. And then that’s kind of what it turned into," per news from AXIOS.

And Chittum, who had received a letter late last year from Aldrich's grandparents' relatives indicating the defendant was likely to commit murder if released, allowed a defense lawyer's plea to dismiss the case as a trial date loomed and the grandparents had ceased cooperating. The revelation that Chittum thought the defendant posed a potentially serious threat adds to the forewarnings authorities are known to have received about Aldrich's increasingly violent behavior and makes it less clear whether the recent shooting spree at Club Q in Colorado Springs could have been stopped.

The records reveal that Aldrich, who was primarily nurtured by their grandparents, wanted to enlist in the military as a teenager but changed their mind. The transcripts state that the suspect admitted to refusing to take medication until "getting on track" after moving to Colorado, earning a medicinal marijuana license, and beginning college. “I also went to the (shooting range) as often as I could since the age of 16,” Aldrich testified, the transcripts show. “My mom and I would go ... sometimes multiple times a week and have fun shooting. This is a major pastime for me. Going to school, working and then relaxing at the shooting range." Shooting at the range “was highly therapeutic for me, and was a great way to spend spare time,” Aldrich told Chittum.

In the attack on November 19, five people died and seventeen were wounded. 305 criminal counts, including first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, assault, and crimes motivated by bigotry, were brought against Aldrich last week. Murder and hate crimes were also included.