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Six minutes of terror: How the deadly Club Q shooting unfolded | CNN

Published

2 years ago

November 22, 2022

Six minutes of terror: How the deadly Club Q shooting unfolded | CNN

CNN
—

Michael Anderson was mixing drinks at Membership Q Saturday evening when he heard popping sounds amid the loud, thumping music.

He wasn’t nervous at first. The pops appeared like some sound results in style at LGBTQ golf equipment, the bartender instructed CNN’s Don Lemon. Then he appeared up and a determine got here into his line of sight, clutching a weapon.

“I noticed the define of a person carrying a rifle on the entrance of the membership,” he mentioned.

Anderson froze.

Confused and abruptly terrified, he ducked behind the bar. Throughout him got here a chaotic mixture of gunfire, screams and breaking glass.

“Glass started to spew in all places throughout me,” he mentioned. “It hit me this was really occurring, in actual life, to me and my associates. … I feared I used to be not going to make it out of that membership alive. I’ve by no means prayed so sincerely and rapidly in my life as I did in that second.”

Anderson stored his head down till the gunshots stopped, then ran out of the constructing to security. Others couldn’t.

Bartender tried to flee membership. He unexpectedly noticed gunman on the bottom

01:24

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CNN

Colorado Springs Police mentioned they acquired the primary 911 name at 11:56 p.m. Inside a minute, that they had dispatched officers to the nightclub. By 12:02 a.m., the gunman was in custody..

Six minutes. Some individuals trapped inside Membership Q mentioned it felt like an eternity.

These agonizing minutes left 5 individuals lifeless: Daniel Aston, Kelly Loving, Ashley Paugh, Derrick Rump and Raymond Inexperienced Vance. Nineteen others have been injured.

In these six minutes, the membership’s repute as a secure haven for LGBTQ individuals in Colorado Springs was shattered. The assault shocked the group and echoed the 2016 bloodbath that left 49 individuals lifeless at Pulse, a homosexual nightclub in Orlando.

Membership Q sits on a busy industrial street in suburban Colorado Springs, surrounded by strip malls and house complexes. Close by are a Walgreen’s, a Subway, a bowling alley and a cellphone restore store.

It’s a fun-loving place, with frequent drag exhibits and playful menu objects akin to “Gayoli Fries” – french fries topped with garlic aioli – and “Loss of life by Rainbow Flight,” a grouping of six candy-flavored photographs. “No person events like Membership Q,” says the membership’s Fb web page.

The membership had hosted a punk-themed drag present earlier that evening by a performer named Del Lusional. Then a DJ started taking part in. A promotional flyer for the membership promised “dancing til 2 am.” The quilt was $7.

Evidence is marked by authorities outside Club Q in Colorado Springs on the morning after the shooting.

The primary photographs rang out shortly earlier than midnight.

Ed Sanders, 63, was ordering a drink on the bar when he was hit.

All the things occurred so quick that he barely grasped what was occurring till he was shot once more – this time within the leg, he instructed CNN in a bedside interview from a close-by hospital.

“I used to be hit within the again and I circled and noticed him (the gunman), and it was very quick,” Sanders mentioned. “The second volley took my leg and I fell. Everyone fell, just about.”

Subsequent to him on the ground was an injured girl.

“I put my coat over her. She was shivering and never respiratory very nicely,” he mentioned. Sanders remembers listening to individuals attempting to assist different capturing victims with tourniquets.

Previous the bar and down a ramp, Membership Q common Joshua Thurman was on the dance flooring when he heard what appeared like gunshots.

“I believed it was the music,” Thurman told reporters the next morning. “I didn’t hear any screams or something like that.” So he stored dancing.

However then Thurman mentioned he heard one other spherical of photographs.

“I circled and noticed not the gun … however the gentle popping out of the gun,” he mentioned. The muzzle flashes continued, adopted by extra popping sounds.

Thurman and a buyer dashed to the membership’s dressing room, the place they encountered a drag performer. They locked the door, turned off the lights, acquired down on the bottom and known as 911.

Joshua Thurman was at Club Q in Colorado Springs when a gunman entered and began shooting.

“As we’re on the telephone telling the police to rush, we’re listening to extra photographs, individuals yelling, individuals screaming. I heard photographs, damaged glass …” he instructed reporters earlier than dropping his face in his fingers and sobbing.

Thurman mentioned the jiffy within the dressing room felt like ceaselessly. He thought of his mom and all his family members, and prayed he’d make it out alive so he might make amends with anybody he might have wronged.

“How, why? As a Black child, it’s taboo to be homosexual. This is likely one of the first locations the place I’ve felt accepted to be who I’m,” he mentioned of Membership Q. “What are we imagined to do? The place are we imagined to go? How are we imagined to really feel secure?”

Gil Rodriguez was on the membership together with his buddy, Felicia Juvera, when the gunfire began. Juvera’s buddy was working the DJ sales space.

So many photographs have been fired, Rodriguez instructed CNN’s Erin Burnett, that he initially thought there have been a number of shooters.

“I bear in mind the sounds. I truthfully thought it was the music till I smelled the precise gunpowder,” Juvera instructed CNN. “The scent is what acquired to me.”

Rodriguez mentioned he used to serve within the navy and that his instincts kicked in when he heard the gunshots. He urged Juvera to get down on the ground, then started scanning their environment after the gunfire stopped “to make sure that he (the gunman) wasn’t nonetheless within the room.” Then he known as 911.

Juvera instructed CNN that her DJ buddy was injured within the capturing however is anticipated to get better.

One other patron, Barrett Hudson, mentioned he heard the pops and appeared to his proper to see the gunman shoot a person proper in entrance of him.

Hudson, who instructed CNN’s John Berman he had moved to Colorado just a few weeks earlier, took off operating in direction of the again of the membership.

“I acquired shot a number of instances. I fell down. He proceeded to shoot me. I acquired again up. I made it out of the again of the membership” and ran throughout the road to a 7-Eleven, he mentioned.

Hudson mentioned he sustained seven gunshot wounds and doesn’t understand how he survived.

“I didn’t anticipate to make it,” he instructed CNN. “Seven bullets missed my backbone, missed my liver, missed my colon. I acquired actually, actually fortunate. I don’t understand how I’m right here.”

Retired Military Main Richard M. Fierro, 45, was at a desk within the membership together with his spouse, daughter and a few associates when the gunfire began.

In an emotional interview Monday, he instructed CNN’s Berman that his navy instincts kicked in when he noticed the gunman, who was carrying a flak vest and wielding a rifle. The gunman was heading towards a door that led to a patio, he mentioned.

Fierro acquired up and charged the person, knocking him to the bottom. One other Membership Q patron, Thomas James, helped Fierro sort out the suspect.

Fierro mentioned he grabbed the gunman’s different weapon, a handgun, “after which simply begin hitting him the place I might. I discovered a crease between his armor and his head, and I simply began wailing away together with his gun.”

Military vet who helped cease Membership Q shooter describes what occurred

However Fierro insists he was merely attempting to guard his household and associates.

“I’m not a hero. I’m only a man that wished to guard his children and spouse, and I nonetheless didn’t get to guard her boyfriend,” he mentioned.

Raymond Inexperienced Vance, one of many 5 individuals killed within the capturing, was the boyfriend of Fierro’s daughter.

“My daughter is grieving the lack of her boyfriend,” Fierro instructed CNN. “He was in our lives for six years.”

It’s a tragedy that Fierro and the opposite individuals at Membership Q on Saturday will possible always remember.

“This entire factor was rather a lot,” he mentioned, choking again tears. “My daughter, spouse, ought to have by no means skilled fight in Colorado Springs, and everyone in that constructing skilled fight that evening … as a result of they have been compelled to.”

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News

As California Burns, ‘Octavia Tried to Tell Us’ Has New Meaning

Published

2 hours ago

January 17, 2025

Press Room

As California Burns, ‘Octavia Tried to Tell Us’ Has New Meaning

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In the wake of the devastating fires in Los Angeles, many people are referencing the work of the science fiction writer Octavia Butler. Butler, who grew up in Pasadena, was the daughter of a housekeeper and a father who was a shoeshiner. She went on to become the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur “genius” award. Her book “Parable of the Sower,” published in 1993, paints a picture of a California ravished by the effects of climate change, income inequality, political divisiveness and centers on a young woman struggling to find faith and the community to build a new future.

The phrase “Octavia tried to tell us,” which began to gain momentum in 2020 during the pandemic, has once again resurfaced, in part because Butler studied science and history so deeply. The accuracy with which she read the shifts in America can, at times, seem eerily prophetic. One entry in “Parable of the Sower,” which is structured as a journal, dated on “February 1, 2025” begins, “We had a fire today.” It goes on to describe how the fear of fires plague Robledo, a fictional town that feels much like Altadena, a haven for the Black middle class for more than 50 years, where Butler lived in the late ’90s.

In 2000, Butler wrote a piece for Essence magazine titled, “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future.” She wrote: “Of course, writing novels about the future doesn’t give me any special ability to foretell the future. But it does encourage me to use our past and present behaviors as guides to the kind of world we seem to be creating. The past, for example, is filled with repeating cycles of strength and weakness, wisdom and stupidity, empire and ashes.”

In one of the last interviews before she died in 2006, Butler spoke to Democracy Now!, an independent news organization, about how she’d been worried about how climate could devastate California . “I wrote the two ‘Parable’ books back in the ’90s,” she said, referring to “Parable of the Sower” and her 1998 follow-up, “Parable of the Talents.” These books, she explained, were about what happens when “we don’t trouble to correct some of the problems we are brewing for ourselves right now. Global warming is one of those problems. And I was aware of it back in the ’80s.” She continued: “A lot of people were seeing it as politics, as something very iffy, as something they could ignore because nothing was going to come of it tomorrow.”

Lynell George, a writer who lives in Los Angeles and the author of a book on Butler and her creative journey, has spent many years studying Butler’s archives at the Huntington Library in Pasadena. In 2022, we asked George to write about how Butler predicted the world we live in. As so many people are turning to her work during this time of tremendous loss, we wanted to share that story with our readers again.

In her piece, “The Visions of Octavia Butler,” George wrote: “In ‘Parable of the Sower,’ Earth is tipping toward climate disaster: A catastrophic drought has led to social upheaval and violent class wars. Butler, a fervent environmentalist, researched the novel by clipping articles, taking notes and monitoring rain and growth in her Southern California neighborhood. She couldn’t help but wonder, she later wrote, what ‘environmental and economic stupidities’ might lead to. She often called herself a pessimist, but threaded into the bleak landscape of her ‘Parable’ novels are strands of glimmering hope — ribbons of blue at the edges of the fictional fiery skies.”

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Donald Trump’s inauguration to be moved indoors because of ‘bitterly cold’ weather

Published

3 hours ago

January 17, 2025

Press Room

Donald Trump’s inauguration to be moved indoors because of ‘bitterly cold’ weather

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Parts of Donald Trump’s inauguration will be moved inside the US Capitol because of freezing weather that is forecast for Washington on Monday.

It will be the first time since 1985 — when a severe cold snap hit Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration — that a swearing-in ceremony has been moved indoors.

The president-elect announced the revised plans in a Truth Social post on Friday, saying he had ordered the inauguration address, as well as prayers and speeches, to be delivered inside the Capitol Rotunda as Reagan had done four decades ago.

“There is an Arctic blast sweeping the Country. I don’t want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way,” Trump wrote.

“It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of Law Enforcement, First Responders, Police K9s and even horses, and hundreds of thousands of supporters that will be outside for many hours on the 20th.”

The National Weather Service said an “enhanced winter storm threat” was in place for Sunday afternoon and evening, and predicted about 2-4 inches of snow would fall, with a “reasonable worst case” scenario of 4-8 inches.

“Bitterly cold wind chills” were expected Monday to Wednesday, the NWS said on Friday, as it forecast temperatures to be “well below freezing” during this period.

The agency is forecasting a high of about -5C at 11am local time on Monday, when the swearing-in ceremony is due to begin, with a wind-chill of -13C that it warned could result in hypothermia or frostbite without appropriate attire.

Trump said the Capital One Arena — with a capacity of 20,000 — will be opened on Monday for a live viewing of the ceremony, and that he would visit the venue, located about 2km from the Capitol, following his swearing-in.

Other events, including a victory rally at the arena are scheduled for Sunday and inaugural balls set for Monday night, will continue as scheduled, the president-elect said.

Trump encouraged supporters who choose to come to “dress warmly!”

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CNN liable for defamation over story on Afghanistan 'black market' rescues

Published

4 hours ago

January 17, 2025

Press Room

CNN liable for defamation over story on Afghanistan 'black market' rescues

Security contractor Zachary Young alleges CNN defamed him in a November 2021 report, shown above, about Afghans’ fears of exorbitant charges from people offering to get them out of the country after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. CNN says it will defend the report in a trial set to start in a Florida court Monday.

CNN via Internet Archive/Screenshot by NPR

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CNN via Internet Archive/Screenshot by NPR

A Florida jury has found that CNN defamed a security consultant in presenting a story that suggested he was charging “exorbitant prices” to evacuate people desperate to get out of Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021.

Jurors found the network should pay $5 million to U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young for lost finances and suffering, and said he was eligible for more in punitive damages. The proceedings turned immediately to expert testimony as both sides presented cases over what punitive damages would be appropriate.

Young sat impassively as the jury’s verdict was read aloud in court.

The November 2021 story focused on concerns from Afghans that they faced extraordinary costs in a “black market” to secure safe passage for relatives and friends, especially those who had worked with U.S. agencies and organizations and therefore were fearful of the takeover by the Taliban.

Young was the only security contractor named in the piece, however, and a caption warned he offered “no guarantee of safety or success.”

He was not directly accused of operating in a black market in the television or written versions of the story, but the words did appear in the caption in the TV version of the story.

On the witness stand during the trial, CNN editors defended use of the term “black market,” saying it meant operating in unregulated circumstances, such as the chaos of Kabul at that time; Young’s lawyers noted that dictionaries consistently ascribe illegality to the term.

This photo shows former President Donald Trump on a camera monitor as he speaks to the press in February outside Manhattan Criminal Court. He's wearing a blue suit jacket, a red tie and a white shirt. Many people in suits and law enforcement uniforms stand behind him.

The jury found CNN liable for defamation per se, meaning it had harmed Young by the very words it chose, and for defamation by implication, that is, it had harmed his reputation by the implications that a reasonable reader or viewer might take from the story.

Young’s lead attorney, Devin Freedman, had argued that CNN willfully damaged Young, costing him millions of dollars and causing irreparable personal harm, and that the network should be punished for it. Toward the very end of his closing arguments, Freedman told the jury they had the rare opportunity to hold the press accountable.

“Media executives around the country are sitting by the phones to see what you do,” Freedman told jurors. “CNN’s executives are waiting in their boardrooms in Georgia to see what you decide. Make the phones ring in Georgia. Send a message.”

After the initial verdict, Judge William S. Henry instructed jurors that they could only find punitive damages against CNN for its actions in the case at hand, not over any other story or issue.

Even so, over the course of the lawsuit, lawyers for Zachary Young acquired internal correspondence showing several editors within CNN held reservations about the solidity of the reporting behind the story.

Outgoing FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, ruled against four petitions seeking to punish television networks for how they coverand satirize presidential politics. The FCC, "should not be weaponized in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment,” she says.

For example, Fuzz Hogan, a senior director of standards for CNN, acknowledged in testimony under oath that he had approved a “three-quarters true” story. Another editor, Tom Lumley, had said in an internal message that the piece was “80 percent emotion.” On the stand, Lumley said that it still wasn’t his favorite story, but on the grounds of the craft of story-telling involved.

During the trial, CNN’s lawyers had contended the story’s reporting holds up as fair and true under scrutiny. CNN correspondent Alexander Marquardt had presented viewers with a LinkedIn message from Young saying it would cost $75,000 to evacuate a vehicle with five or six passengers from Kabul to Pakistan. Young said he worked with corporate sponsors, including Bloomberg and Audible, rather than individuals.

On the stand, Young acknowledged that he took a 65% profit margin from the fees he charged, and took inquiries from individuals. He also curtly and coarsely brushed off people inquiring about help who could not afford his fees.

Other groups involving U.S. veterans and non-governmental organizations sought to get Afghans out without such profits, as a former major general testifying on Young’s behalf acknowledged. The retired major general, James V. Young Jr. (not related to Zach Young), said he charged donors for the cost.

CNN’s legal team, led by David Axelrod (the lawyer is not related to the Obama White House official and CNN analyst of the same name) had told jurors they should rely on their own “common sense.”

Axelrod had been able to press Young to concede that some of his claims to potential clients were not borne out by facts; Young had not in fact evacuated people from Afghanistan by air. Nor was he in constant contact with journalists, as claimed.

A Legendary Marine's Name As Code: The Ad Hoc Network That Helped Rescue Afghans

In his closing argument, Freedman presented Young as a swashbuckling former CIA operative to explain his curtness in messages to desperate people trying to help people.

On the witness stand, however, Young emerged as emotionally vulnerable himself, weeping during testimony. He recounted that, after the story ran, he became despondent, depressed, alienated from intimacy with his wife, cut off from friends and family members. HIs attorney cited “deep and lasting wounds” from the piece.

The piece was presented initially on CNN’s The Lead With Jake Tapper, and a fuller written version subsequently posted on CNN’s website. A few months later, shortly after Young’s legal team threatened legal actions, a substitute anchor apologized to Young on the air for use of the term “black market” in the story, and said it did not apply to him.

Freedman, Young’s attorney, called the apology insufficient.

“This is what makes this case historic: punitive damages,” Freedman told jurors. “A media company has to face an American jury with the power to punish. That is not a frequent event. Do you believe that CNN should be punished? Do you believe they should send a message to other media companies to avoid this misconduct?”

This story will be updated after the jury decides on what, if any, punitive damages to award Young.