Muhlaysia Booker’s mother, Stephanie Houston outside the courtroom after Kendrell Lyles’ sentencing
Two infamous crimes against LGBTQ people ended this year with guilty pleas and lengthy sentences for the perpetrators.
On Monday, June 26, 23-year-old Anderson Lee Aldritch was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole in connection with the November 2022 attack at Club Q in Colorado Springs that left five people dead and 19 others injured.
Aldritch had pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder and 46 counts of attempted murder. Judge Michael McHenry also sentenced Aldritch to an addition 2,208 years in prison for the attempted murder charges, plus a four-year sentence for bias-motivated charges.
The death penalty was not an option for the state charges because Colorado abolished the death penalty in 2020. But a federal investigation had been opened in the case, and Aldritch reportedly pleaded guilty to the state charges to avoid the possibility of a death sentence if convicted in federal court.
Then in Dallas, on Monday, Nov. 5 — the day his trial on charges he had murdered trans woman Muhlaysia Booker in May 2019 was scheduled to begin — Kendrell Lavar Lyles pleaded guilty to shooting Booker to death and leaving her body in the middle of a street in East Dallas.
Booker was killed almost exactly a month after she was attacked and beaten by a group of men in a South Dallas apartment complex parking lot following a fender-bender accident. Video of the attack happening as a crowd of bystanders watched and laughed went viral, making Muhlaysia Booker famous and shining a light on the epidemic of violence against trans women, especially trans women of color.
The same day he pleaded guilty, Lyles was sentenced to 48 years in prison for Booker’s death. He also faces murder charges in connection with the deaths of two people in Collin County.
— Tammye Nash
