Anderson Aldrich, mom caught on video using racist slurs at airport
A disturbing video has emerged of alleged Colorado LGBTQ nightclub shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich and his mother spewing racist slurs at fellow passengers after a flight to Denver in July.
Frontier Airlines passenger Maria Martinez captured cellphone footage of Aldrich and their mother, Laura Voepel, during the heated confrontation at the terminal on July 31, KDVR reported.
The clip posted by the station begins with Martinez asking Voepel about a racial slur aimed at Mexicans.
“What makes me a b—-r?” she is heard asking.
“Shut up!” Voepel snaps back.
“What makes me a b—-r?” Martinez asks again.
As she continues to follow the pair, a person believed to be Aldrich tells her, “You keep following me and I’m going to f— you up.”
Even though the overweight person was wearing a mask, Martinez and her daughter Kayla Martinez said they now recognize the person as the nonbinary suspect in the deadly mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs.
Tanya De La O, a friend who was traveling with the Martinezes that day, claimed Voepel began using racist language immediately upon landing.
“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.
She told the outlet that a black man tried to intervene to de-escalate the situation but that Aldrich hurled a racist slur at him.
“He also told him to ‘shut the f— up, you f—- n—–,’” De La O told the station.
De La O said she also remembers a chilling comment Aldrich made while getting off the plane.
“I wish I can shoot all of you right now,” she said they muttered.
Martinez said Aldrich was “very hateful acting – like, just evil.”
Kayla added: “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.”
Maria said her “friend was like, we won’t be surprised, like, if he’s a mass shooter. And it was scary to think that.”
De La O said she had no doubt Aldrich picked up the hateful behavior from their mom.
“I can see where he gets it from. She’s the one that started with the racial slur … She was obnoxious. The whole flight,” she told KDVR.
“She literally made the crew remove a young lady with her baby that were sitting behind her because she (Voepel) was complaining about the baby — and the plane hadn’t even taken off yet,” De La O added.
Maria said she tried to complain to the cabin crew but that they told her to call a customer service rep, who later told her to submit the complaint in writing.
“We had a conflict with a mass shooter is like very scary and traumatic. Yeah, it’s surreal,” she told KDVR.
Aldrich hasn’t been formally charged but may face murder and hate-crime raps for allegedly killing five people and wounding 17 others at Club Q.
On Wednesday, the suspect appeared dazed, bruised, and bloodied in court — apparently from the actions of the two people who held them down until police arrived.
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