Mass shooting suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich appears in two booking photos provided by the Colorado Springs Police Department.
Laura Lea Voepel, 45, the mother of Club Q mass shooting suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, was cited for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest just a few hours after her child allegedly carried out the attack, according to local news reports.
“Subject continued to make unreasonable noise directly next to multiple apartments,” said a summons obtained by Denver NBC affiliate KUSA — a document that referenced Voepel. “While I attempted to place subject into custody, she became combative by physically resisting officers control by force.”
The address was Voepel’s Colorado Springs residence. She did not go to jail, but a hearing is scheduled for Jan. 25.
Voepel’s incident happened Nov. 20 at 3:30 a.m., according to Denver FOX affiliate KDVR. That was hours before authorities publicly identified Aldrich as the shooter at Club Q.
It was just before midnight on Nov. 19 that authorities say Aldrich attacked the local Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub. The defendant is accused of killing five people: Bartender Daniel Davis Aston, 28; customer Kelly Loving, 40; bartender and bar co-owner Derrick Rump, 38, customer Ashley Paugh, 35; and customer Raymond Greene Vance, 22.
Attorneys for Aldrich, who is locked up on murder and hate crimes charges, said their client is non-binary and used they/them pronouns.
Aston was a transgender man, Loving was a transgender woman, and Rump was gay. Paugh was not part of the LGBTQ community, her sister said. Vance was there with his girlfriend Kassy and her family. Kassy’s father Richard M. Fierro, a local man who served four combat tours in the U.S. Army, is credited as one of the people who stopped Aldrich. He told The New York Times he grabbed the gun out of the shooter’s hand and “just started hitting him in the head, over and over.” He ordered a nearby woman to stomp on the shooter’s head with her high heels, he said.
Aldrich’s mugshot shows bruising and marks spread across their face and head.
Their parents attracted scrutiny in the aftermath of the tragedy, as reporters tried to suss out the motive behind the shooting. Aldrich’s father Aaron Brink — a former porn actor who once appeared in the TV show Intervention — spoke to San Diego, California CBS affiliate KFMB, expressing an initial worry that his son might have been gay.
“You know Mormons don’t do gay. We don’t do gay,” he said. “There’s no gays in the Mormon church. We don’t do gay.”
As for Voepel, she faced three open warrants out of California, according to The Denver Gazette. There was a 2008 arrest for false reporting, a 2010 arrest for speeding and failure to appear, and a 2011 arrest for driving under the influence. There was a case closed out of Riverside for public intoxication and failure to appear. Voepel was charge accused of committing arson in San Antonio, Texas, on Jan. 14, 2012. This was eventually brought down to a misdemeanor and Voepel was sentenced to five years of probation. She did not complete it.
Brink and Laura Voepel separated a year after Aldrich was born.
The Club Q shooting suspect, who changed their name at age 15 from Nicholas Franklin Brink with their family’s support, was previously arrest in 2021 in what has been listed as a kidnapping case. Voepel claimed Aldrich threatened her with a a homemade bomb, multiple weapons, and ammunition. There were no formal charges, and the case was reportedly sealed.
[Mugshot via the Colorado Springs Police Department.]
