FAYETTEVILLE, Ark — A gunman opened fire at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, killing five people and injuring 18 people on Nov. 19. The massacre ended when a patron was able to get ahold of the suspect's handgun and beat him with it, incapacitating him until police arrived.
“When I first heard of the news it was jarring… it is a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community that has been invaded by someone,” explained Caleb Cash-Tobey, the advisor of the Pride Club at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith (UAFS).
Cash-Tobey says the killings came right before the start of a very special day. That day is International Transgender Remembrance Day.
“Someone preyed on the fact that they knew that the next day would be Trans Awareness Day, where we as a community will remember those that have passed away and so they went into a space and added more harm on a day that we are already trying to move forward from the lives have lost. Trans lives are very important, trans lives matter,” Cash-Tobey said.
Cash-Tobey is the advisor for Pride Club at UAFS and he says the recent shooting in Colorado reminded him of the 2016 mass shooting in Orlando.
“I remember walking into every gay bar and thinking where my closest exit is, how can I get out if I need to? And that anxiety kind of went away, and now it’s back again. How do we know if that’s not going to happen in our community or any community that I visit for that matter?”
According to the Associated Press, drag events have recently become a focus of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and protests as opponents, including politicians, have proposed banning children from them, falsely claiming that they are used to “groom” children.
“Drag is an art. Drag is more than just an 'I’m putting on a dress as a man.' But it’s me being a character, it’s a person being character… it is someone expressing part of themselves that they normally would not express during the daytime and it’s not about grooming children,” Cash-Tobey explained.
Jamie Wilson manages an owned and operated LGBTQ bar in Fayetteville called C4. The nightclub is known to provide an important safe space for people in Northwest Arkansas.
“We are family to a lot of people. In our world of that community, some people get disowned by their families and they have nowhere to go. So they come here. Our karaoke host Melissa plays the mother role to so many. Lots of them call me dad," Wilson said. "It’s an unfortunate thing that we have to fill in that gap."
The C4 manager says after hearing about an attack on an LGBTQ nightclub, safety is his top priority.
“We’ve spent a good amount of money on new cameras. We have our outside, at least on our side of the building, and then inside of the building it’s completely covered by cameras; high resolution, sound, you know. So, we do monitor that stuff, along with having a presence walk around,” Wilson said.
According to records obtained by the Associated Press, the man suspected of opening fire at Club Q in Colorado Springs could face five murder charges and five charges of committing a bias-motivated crime.
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