Colorado mayor calls nightclub shooting “gay hate crime”

The man suspected of killing five people and injuring others at a gay bar in Colorado Springs is facing murder and hate crime charges.

22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich faces five murder charges and five charges of committing a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury.

Police say the suspect used an AR-15-style semiautomatic weapon in Saturday night’s attack at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs.

They say a handgun and additional ammunition magazines also were recovered.

The mother of Daniel Aston, a 28-year-old identified as one of the victims of the deadly Colorado Springs shooting, has described the hours after his death as a “nightmare that you can’t wake up from.”

Colorado’s Mayor wants justice to be served.

Questions are being raised about why authorities didn’t seek to take Aldrich’s guns away from him last year, when he was arrested after his mother reported he threatened her with a homemade bomb and other weapons.

Colorado’s attorney general has labelled the shooting as a hate crime.