COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A recent neighbor of Club Q shooting suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich said he spent hours talking to the FBI on Tuesday morning. He told investigators the suspect made several hateful comments toward the LGBTQ community.
"Just expressed he didn’t like the LGBTQ community," said Xavier Kraus, who lived across the hallway from Aldrich. "And pretty sure at one point he expressed he hated the LGBTQ community, he hated gays."
"This is not the type of person I would take around my gay friends," he said.
Kraus said he and Aldrich became close friends last year. They bonded over tech and video games.
A public defender's court filing to unseal the arrest warrant says Aldrich is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. That's how 9NEWS will refer to the suspect.
According to Kraus, Aldrich and their mom moved into the apartment building in August 2021, which was shortly after deputies in El Paso County arrested Aldrich on multiple felonies.
A press release from the El Paso County Sheriff's Office said the suspect's mom called to report Aldrich threatened to hurt her with a homemade bomb and weapons.
Law enforcement responded to a home on Rubicon Drive, and then deputies realized the suspect was at a house on Pilgrimage Road.
Doorbell camera video taken after the 911 call shows the suspect and their mom walking to the front door of Leslie Bowman’s home on Pilgrimage Road, where the mom was renting a room.
"My understanding is he got into some sort of argument with his grandparents that he lived with and at some point threatened them with a weapon," Bowman said.
The suspect lived with his grandparents nearby, at the home on Rubicon Drive where deputies first responded to the report of a bomb threat.
Bowman said Aldrich came to her home on Pilgrimage Road to hide. While Aldrich was in a standoff with police, Bowman, who was not at home at the time, was receiving updates from the suspect's mom.
Hours later, deputies arrested the suspect on multiple felonies, including felony menacing and first-degree kidnapping.
Bowman said she provided the Ring camera video to law enforcement, along with a copy of a live stream by the suspect from the mom's Facebook page.
"My biggest confusion came from when I found out the charges had been dropped," Bowman said. "Was it because they felt they didn’t have enough information? Or was it because the witnesses weren’t cooperating?"
Kraus remembers talking about this case with Aldrich and their mom.
"I can't remember the full details of the story, but bottom line is they didn't want to testify against Andy," Kraus said.
Law enforcement can't talk about what happened to this case, because the records are sealed.
After the case was dropped, Kraus said the suspect showed off multiple guns to him.
"According to him, these were all legal weapons. He was able to have them," Kraus said.
"If I knew what he was going to do what he did, I would have done something. I would have said something. I just didn’t know," Kraus said.
Colorado Springs Police officers knocked on Kraus' door just hours after the shooting at Club Q. Kraus said investigators asked questions about his former neighbor but they didn't explain why. He didn't find out Aldrich was arrested in the Club Q shooting until the next morning when he read the news.
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