Colorado
Gay club shooting suspect charged with hate crimes
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The suspect accused of entering a Colorado gay nightclub clad in body armor and opening fire with an AR-15-style rifle, killing five people and wounding 17 others, was formally charged with hate crimes as well as murder on Tuesday.
Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, sat upright in a chair during the hearing and appeared alert. In an earlier court appearance just a few days after the shooting, the defendant’s head and face were covered with bruises and Aldrich had to be prompted by attorneys to respond to questions from a judge.
Investigators said Aldrich entered Club Q, a sanctuary for the LGBTQ community in the mostly conservative city of Colorado Springs, just before midnight on Nov. 19 and began shooting during a drag queen’s birthday celebration. The killing stopped after patrons wrestled the suspect to the ground, beating Aldrich into submission, they said.
Aldrich had been held on hate crime charges but prosecutors had said previously they weren’t sure if those counts would stick because they needed to assess if there was adequate evidence to show it was a bias motivated crime.
District Attorney Michael Allen had noted that murder charges would carry the harshest penalty — likely life in prison — but also said it was important to show the community that bias motivated crimes are not tolerated if there was evidence to support the charge.
Aldrich, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns according to defense court filings, was arrested at the club by police. They have not entered a plea or spoken about the events.
According to witnesses, Aldrich fired first at people gathered at the club’s bar before spraying bullets across the dance floor during the attack, which came on the eve of an annual day of remembrance for transgender people lost to violence.
More than a year before the shooting, Aldrich was arrested on allegations of making a bomb threat that led to the evacuation of about 10 homes. Aldrich threatened to harm their own family with a homemade bomb, ammunition and multiple weapons, authorities said at the time. Aldrich was booked into jail on suspicion of felony menacing and kidnapping, but the case was apparently later sealed and it’s unclear what became of the charges. There are no public indications that the case led to a conviction.
Ring doorbell video obtained by the AP shows Aldrich arriving at their mother’s front door with a big black bag, telling her the police were nearby and adding, “This is where I stand. Today I die.”
Washington
Man sentenced to over 3 years in prison for gun stash, bunker
EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — A man was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison Friday after he was found with an illegal arsenal of guns and explosives in a bunker in the Arlington area northeast of Everett.
Court documents said last November that James Bowden, now 42, confronted a man in a car and the two argued before Bowden fired a gun into the car’s windshield, hitting the man’s hand, The Herald reported.
In a subsequent search of Bowden’s property, federal investigators found a room in a detached garage that was set up with chemicals and equipment used to make explosives. A photo showed shelves filled with chemicals, a gas mask and “the laboratory” written in neon green paint, prosecutors said.
A removable panel in floor revealed a ladder to a bunker with guns, ammunition, grenades and other equipment, prosecutors said. Bomb technicians spent hours detonating the materials, prosecutors said.
Prior felony convictions including theft and burglary in 1999 prohibited barred Bowden from having the weapons.
In May, Bowden pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm, possession of machine guns and possession of a destructive device in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Federal prosecutors dropped several other charges.
Snohomish County prosecutors also dropped an assault charge against Bowden for the shooting.
Bowden was an iron worker before he got hurt on the job and increasingly used drugs, he wrote in a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez.
“Please see that I am an honest man who has been an Iron Worker for 20 years, an active participant in community, and a man who dearly loves his children,” Bowden wrote in his letter, “but most of all, a man that can learn from his folly and from having gone astray.”
Martinez sentenced Bowden to 42 months, below the guidelines, noting drugs likely played a role in Bowden’s crimes.
Oklahoma
Man charged in killings of 4 men found in river
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A Oklahoma man accused of killing and dismembering four men in eastern Oklahoma was charged Monday with four counts of first-degree murder.
Okmulgee County District Attorney Carol Iski announced the charges against Joseph Kennedy, 67, at a news conference.
The dismembered bodies of Mark Chastain, 32, Billy Chastain, 30, Mike Sparks, 32, and Alex Stevens, 29, were found Oct. 14 in the Deep Fork River in Okmulgee, a town of around 11,000 people that is about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of Tulsa. The men were believed to have left a house in Okmulgee on bicycles the evening of Oct. 9.
Iski said video from a nearby business places Kennedy at his Okmulgee scrap yard that night when authorities believe the men were shot and killed. She said investigators also found blood and personal items, including a broken set of dentures, in a field near the scrapyard, as well as 7.62-caliber shell casings.
Evidence from Kennedy’s cellphone also place him near a bridge where the men’s dismembered bodies were discovered, Iski said.
Iski said DNA evidence from blood found inside one of the vehicles Kennedy drove and on a pair of his sneakers also link him to the crime.
Court documents filed last week indicate Kennedy told a woman in Gore, Oklahoma, that he killed and dismembered the four men because they were stealing from him.
“He told her they were all against him, and he just lost it and he just started shooting,” Iski said. “She said that he told her that after he shot them, that he cut them up.”
Iski said she has not made a decision on whether to seek the death penalty.
Kennedy’s court-appointed attorneys have declined to comment on the case.
Kennedy was arrested Oct. 17 in Daytona Beach Shores, Florida, while driving a stolen vehicle, Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice said. He was later extradited to Oklahoma.
Oklahoma
Man charged with killing 4 workers at pot farm
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A man accused of killing four workers at an Oklahoma marijuana farm had demanded the return of his $300,000 investment in the operation shortly before he started shooting, prosecutors allege in court documents.
Chen Wu, 45, was charged Friday in Kingfisher County with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of assault and battery with a deadly weapon in connection with the Nov. 20 killings.
“Eyewitnesses to the murders have stated that (Wu) demanded $300,000 be handed over to him by other employees of the marijuana operation, as a return of a portion of his ‘investment’ in the enterprise,” Assistant District Attorney Austin Murrey wrote. “The fact that it could not be handed over on a moment’s notice is what precipitated the mass murder.”
Prosecutors on Friday also filed a motion that Wu be held without bond.
In an arrest affidavit filed in the case, a worker who was at the farm on the day of the killings told investigators that a man, later identified as Wu, came into the garage and shot one man in the leg.
“The suspect held multiple people inside the garage at gunpoint,” Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent Phillip Ott wrote in the affidavit. “The suspect demanded $300,000 within the next half hour or he was going to kill everyone in the garage.”
Another worker at the farm told investigators Wu had worked at the farm about a year earlier.
Killed in the attack were Quirong Lin, Chen He Chun, Chen He Qiang and Fang Hui Lee, court documents show. A fifth person, Yi Fei Lin, was wounded. Authorities have said Wu and all of the victims were Chinese citizens and that the pot farm on a 10-acre (4-hectare) property west of Hennessey was operating under an illegally obtained license to grow marijuana for medical purposes.
Wu is scheduled to make an initial appearance Wednesday, court documents show. Jail and court records don’t indicate the name of an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
The state’s motion also indicates there is video that depicts portions of the slayings and that eyewitnesses who know Wu have positively identified him. Authorities have previously said the victims were “executed.”
Wu was arrested Nov. 22 in Florida after the vehicle he was driving was flagged by a car tag reader, police in Miami Beach said. Oklahoma authorities took Wu from Miami-Dade County jail Wednesday, and he was booked into the Kingfisher County jail on Thursday.
Louisiana
2 men suing the prosecutor’s office that helped free them
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The New Orleans district attorney finds himself having to fight a lawsuit filed by two men who won their freedom with help from the district attorney’s office.
The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reports that Kuantay Reeder and Kaliegh Smith had their convictions in separate criminal cases vacated in 2021 with the help of District Attorney Jason Williams’ civil rights division. Both were freed from prison as a result and they are now seeking compensation from the district attorney’s office in separate lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in New Orleans.
Faced with the potential liability of his predecessors in the district attorney’s office, Williams has said in court filings that his taxpayer-funded office can’t be held financially responsible for its past actions. He declined to comment to the newspaper on his views about paying damages for past wrongs.
Legal experts said the exonerated men’s lawsuits raise questions that haven’t been extensively explored.
“Once the error is corrected in the criminal case, what does further accountability mean?” asked Jennifer Laurin, a University of Texas School of Law professor who studies constitutional litigation and criminal law reforms.
Reeder and Smith both were convicted in second-degree murder cases. Reeder was incarcerated for roughly 18 years in connection with a 1993 slaying; Smith, roughly 14 years after his arrest in a 2007 killing. Both were freed after Williams’ civil rights division acknowledged that important information had been withheld by prosecutors. Both convictions came well before Williams won election in 2020 as a reformer.
In fighting Smith’s lawsuit, Williams’ attorneys note a recent decision from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In that case, which challenged the bail systems in criminal courts, the federal judges ruled that Texas judges act not on behalf of their counties, but the state.
Williams has argued that district attorneys also act as arms of the state when they prosecute state laws, and aren’t subject to lawsuits in federal court.
A wrongfully convicted person in Louisiana can also seek restitution through the state by proving themselves factually innocent to a judge. But the person will face a legal fight against the state attorney general’s office. And any award won is capped at $400,000.
