Anderson Lee Aldrich, the suspect accused of killing five people in a LGBTQ nightclub last weekend, got into a verbal confrontation with other passengers on a flight to Denver months before the attack.
Cell phone video obtained by KDVR shows Aldrich and their mother, Laura Voepel, in a heated argument at an airport terminal with Maria Martinez, a passenger on a Frontier Airlines flight to Denver on July 31.
Martinez told KDVR that she started recording the pair after Voepel called her a derogatory term used against Hispanics while they were leaving the plane.
In the clip Martinez was following them with her cell phone until Aldrich turned and told her, “you keep following me and I’m going to f— you up.”
Martinez told the outlet she and her daughter Kayla Martinez immediately recognized Aldrich as the suspect who murdered five people in Club Q last weekend and injured 17 others.
READ: Father of Colorado shooting suspect “got scared” because he thought his son was gay.
Tanya De La O, a friend who was traveling with the Martinez family that day, said Voepel began using racist language as soon as the flight landed.
“I was having a hard time getting my luggage down from the overhead bin, and all of a sudden, I just hear this woman say, ‘Hurry the f— up, you b—-r!’ And then I turned around and said, ‘Excuse me?’” she told KDVR.
When a Black male passenger tried to de-escalate the situation, De La O said Aldrich told him to “shut the f*ck up” and called him a “n*****”.
“He seems very hateful acting. Like, just evil,” Martinez said referring to Aldrich.
“Like just being in the presence of him, I could just feel like the hate. He just seems like he has hate deep down in his heart,” Martinez’s daughter, Kayla added.
“We had a conflict with a mass shooter is like very scary and traumatic. Yeah, it’s surreal,” Martinez said.
Police in Colorado Springs, Colorado say Aldrich entered Club Q just before midnight on Saturday and began shooting before he was subdued by Former Army Maj. Richard Fierro and Thomas James.
In court filings on Tuesday lawyers for Aldrich said he identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.
Aldrich made their first could appearance on Wednesday with visible bruises on their face. They were ordered to remain in jail without bail. Aldrich faces five counts of murder and five counts of committing a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury.
