Judge dismisses lawsuit against El Paso County officials over Club Q shooting
Celeste Springer
EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) — A lawsuit against the former El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elders and El Paso County Commissioners over the Club Q has been dismissed, according to court records.
Earlier this month, the club owners were also released from the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs argued that El Paso County officials failed to use Colorado’s Red Flag Law to stop the shooter, who ultimately killed five people, from getting weapons before the attack.
In part, the judge found that the plaintiffs failed to prove that El Paso County officials created or enhanced a risk of harm.
While the lawsuit was dismissed due to several different legal precedents, the judge’s order did have strong words for El Paso County officials, as read below:
“All this being said, Plaintiffs’ allegations in their SAC are profoundly and deeplytroubling. As alleged, Government Defendants knew in no-uncertain-terms that Aldrichhad proclaimed that “they planned to be the next mass killer and had been stockpilingammunition, firearms, and bullet-proof body armor.” (ECF No. 29 ¶ 98.) YetGovernment Defendants defiantly did nothing, contemptuously ignoring the will of thepeople, and refused to avail themselves of the critical tool the legislature had justequipped them with—the tool that might have prevented the monstrous and bloody actwhich cost the lives of and seriously wounded so many innocent Coloradans—to takeAldrich’s firearms from them. To be sure, these allegations amount to much more thanmere negligence—they represent a conscious and intentional disregard of a known andunjustifiable risk, something which in the Court’s view amounts to an abdication of localofficials’ moral responsibility to protect the public.”