▶ Watch Video: Shooting victim shares details from inside Colorado club
Days after a shooting at a Colorado Springs nightclub left five dead and 17 wounded, more information has been revealed about the suspected gunman as friends, family and survivors mourn.
Born with the name Nicholas Brink, the suspected shooter in Saturday night’s mass shooting at Club Q identifies as non-binary and uses they and them pronouns, his attorneys say. Court records show they petitioned to change their name to Anderson Lee Aldrich at the age of 15, saying they did not want to be connected to their father who had a criminal record. The change happened months after they were allegedly bullied viciously online.
Since the shooting, survivors, friends and family of victims have opened up about the aftermath of the tragic situation that took the lives of Raymond Green Vance, whose girlfriend’s father helped subdue the suspect; Ashley Paugh, 35, a mother who helped find homes for foster children; Daniel Aston, 28, who worked at the club as a bartender and entertainer; Kelly Loving, 40, whose sister described her as “caring and sweet”; and Derrick Rump, 38, another club bartender who was known for his quick wit and adopting his friends as family.
Jerecho Loveall was devastated to learn his friends, Rump and Aston, didn’t survive the shooting.
“Knowing them as a person and as people, they were very protective,” Loveall told CBS News’ Janet Shamlian. “And they would have done everything they could to make sure everybody in that place was safe. And Saturday night showed that they put everything on the line to make sure that people that came in that bar were safe.”
Loveall was one of many injured during the shooting.
“I was shot through and through on my leg, right in front of my shin,” Loveall said. “Went through the bone.”
Despite his injury, Loveall hurried to help others.
“There was another patron that had found rags, and I had taken a stack from him and started handling them to the people that were physically inured,” he said. “And you could physically see bleeding.”
For Loveall, the physical wounds are evident, and the unseen ones are hard to process.
“I’ll break down at times, I’ll be okay at times,” he said. “I don’t fully know how to I’m feeling at this current moment.”
Even so, Loveall said he would return to Club Q, if it reopens.
“I will not allow these people to win by striking enough fear in who I am and who we are as a community to stop us from being proud and being who we are and staying strong,” he said. “If I allow them to keep me from a place that was my home for so long. It means they win and I cannot allow that.”
More is also being discovered about Richard Fierro and Thomas James, two men credited with taking down the suspected shooter.
The U.S. Navy said James is enlisted and stationed in Colorado Springs, and is in stable condition at a hospital. Fierro is a U.S. Army veteran who said Monday that he wishes he could have done more.
