What We Know About the Colorado Springs Shooting Victims
What We Know About the Colorado Springs Shooting Victims
Daniel Aston was a bartender at Club Q. Kelly Loving was on a weekend trip from Denver.
What We Know About the Colorado Springs Shooting Victims
By Eliza Fawcett and Luke Vander Ploeg
https://www.nytimes.com/article/victims-colorado-springs-shooting.html
Nov. 21, 2022
At least five people were killed and 25 others injured on Saturday night when a gunman opened fire with an AR-15 style rifle in Club Q, an L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub in Colorado Springs.
The authorities have not yet released a list of the victims. Here is what we know about those who have been identified by family members so far.
Daniel Aston, a 28-year-old transgender man, moved to Colorado Springs two years ago and landed his first job as a bartender at Club Q. He loved the work, and would often perform at the venue, his mother, Sabrina Aston, told The Associated Press on Sunday.
“He would get crazy wigs and outfits and he would jump across the stage and he could slide on his knees,” she said. “And he was quite entertaining. Everyone started hooting and hollering.”
The news of her son’s death was “just a nightmare that you can’t wake up from,” Ms. Aston told the news agency. “And I keep thinking it’s just, it’s a mistake. They’ve made a mistake and that he’s really alive.”
Mr. Aston was “always happy and silly” and “lit up a room,” his mother said. As a child, she added, he was “always dressing up,” had a “real good imagination,” and would write plays for neighborhood children to stage.
She said she was wrestling with the fact that her son and others were killed at Club Q on a night when patrons were marking the Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual commemoration of transgender people who have been killed in acts of anti-transgender violence.
“They were doing, like, a celebration of life for those people that had died,” she said. “And instead, they lost their lives.”
Kelly Loving, 40, visited Club Q on Saturday night during a weekend trip from Denver. She was killed only a few minutes after speaking to a friend on FaceTime.
“I’m so devastated, because she was such a good person,” said Natalee Skye Bingham, 25, who described herself as a close friend of Ms. Loving. “She was going to be at my house for Thanksgiving this upcoming Thursday and, now, it’s one less person at my table.”
Ms. Bingham said she and Ms. Loving had known each other for years, going back to when they both lived in Florida. Ms. Loving had only recently moved to Denver, she said.
Ms. Bingham described Ms. Loving as a “like a trans mother to me” — someone who taught her how to live her day-to-day life.
“In the gay community, you create your families, so it’s like I lost my real mother, almost,” she said.
Ms. Loving’s sister, Tiffany Loving, said that she learned of Kelly Loving’s death from the F.B.I. on Sunday.
“She was loving, always trying to help the next person out, instead of thinking of herself,” Tiffany Loving said. “She just was a caring person. I was really close with her.”
Ms. Bingham said she was on a FaceTime call with Kelly Loving shortly before the shooting began at Club Q. The last words she said to her friend, she recalled, were: “Be safe. I love you.”
Eliza Fawcett is a reporter for the National desk and a member of the 2022-2023 New York Times fellowship class. @ElizaFawcett
Luke Vander Ploeg is a senior producer on “The Daily” and a reporter for the National Desk covering the Midwest. @LukeVanderPloeg
We cannot let this become a part of the "new normal". These are people robbed of their lives, their lives, their contribution to a life we all belong to.
This isn't just an attack on a small portion of all of us, this is an attack on all of us.
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