The incident has left the local LGBTQ+ community shaken and angry.

On Saturday night, Club Q, an LGBTQ+-supportive nightclub in the town of Colorado Springs, Colorado, was attacked by a gunman armed with an AR-15 rifle. The gunman opened fire immediately as he entered the club, killing 5 individuals and injuring 25 before he was subdued by several clubgoers. The gunman is currently in police custody.

"Our community is shattered. This is the only LGBTQIA+ space we have in the city of Colorado Springs."

Joshua Thurman described the scene at Club Q, a gay club in Colorado where a gunman killed at least five people and injured more than two dozen others. https://t.co/IiAecX7Yka pic.twitter.com/JJyxrCRpjh

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 21, 2022

For much of Colorado Springs’ LGBTQ+ citizens, Club Q was a place of safety and camaraderie where they could be happy and comfortable. Sadly, this incident has irrevocably tainted the club for many of its patrons, who no longer feel safe being themselves there.

“This space is really the only place in Colorado Springs that the LGBTQ+ community can get together and be ourselves,” Cole Danielson, one of the club’s employees, told CNN.

“Our safety as queer people in Colorado Springs is now questioned,” Danielson said. “I’m scared to be myself as a trans man in this community.”

The suspect in the Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooting allegedly threatened his mother with a bomb last year. Still, there’s no record that anyone tried to trigger Colorado’s “red flag” law, which would have allowed authorities to seize his weapons. https://t.co/Wz4JitZpcb

— The Associated Press (@AP) November 21, 2022

“Club Q, along with all of the other LGBTQIA+ bars, represent a safe space for a community that has felt unsafe and rejected for most of their lives,” Colorado drag performer Jewels Parks told CNN.

“To have our safe place ripped from us and to lose members of our community, is a whole other type of hurt,” Parks said. “Right now, we need to love each other a little extra and be kind to one another.”