The surge of anguish that has been unleashed in Colorado Springs and across the country reflects not only the sadness over the lives lost, but the immense pain from what many saw as an assault on a community that has long been marginalized and threatened with violence.
The crowd at Club Q on Saturday night was celebrating Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual commemoration that underscores the grave danger that transgender, gender-nonconforming and gay people who openly embrace their identities can face.
“They were doing, like, a celebration of life for those people that had died,” Sabrina Aston, Mr. Aston’s mother, told The Associated Press. “And instead, they lost their lives.”
Ms. Loving, 40, visited Club Q on Saturday night during a weekend trip from Denver, where she had moved about a month ago.
“She was loving, always trying to help the next person out, instead of thinking of herself,” her sister, Tiffany Loving, said. “She just was a caring person. I was really close with her.”
Natalee Skye Bingham, 25, said she had first met Ms. Loving about seven years ago when they worked together at a club in Florida. Ms. Bingham said that Ms. Loving had been like a mother to her, encouraging her at an uncertain time.
“When I first started to transition, I wasn’t confident at all,” Ms. Bingham recalled. “She reminded me that you are not doing the wrong thing by being trans, that it was OK to embrace it because you are a beautiful person.”
“Without her giving me the confidence,” Ms. Bingham went on, “I don’t know where I would be today.”
Ms. Bingham said that Ms. Loving, like many trans people, had been beaten up before, even stabbed and shot at, but that she was a “fighter.”
Lately, Ms. Loving had been depressed, but she was starting to feel better when she made her first and only visit to Club Q. A few minutes before the shooting, she had been showing off her outfit — black skirt, black top, newly colored red hair — over a FaceTime call.
“It was nice to see her so confident in herself,” Ms. Bingham said. “It was so relieving to know that she felt beautiful that night.”
Shadavia Green, 38, had also gone to Club Q for the first time on a visit to Colorado Springs. It was a few years ago, and she could immediately sense that the space was special.
“You didn’t feel like you were going to a bar,” she said on Monday. “It felt like you were going to see family.”
A few months later, Ms. Green moved to the city from Georgia and became a bartender at the club. From 2018 to 2021, she worked behind the bar with Mr. Rump, who had started before she arrived, and later with Mr. Aston, who was hired about two years ago.
Ms. Green said Mr. Rump had a biting sense of humor, yet he was also “very empathetic.”
On busy nights at the club, which could attract as many as 200 patrons, Mr. Rump took care to make them feel at ease and check in with anyone who seemed particularly quiet.
“He genuinely loved Club Q,” Ms. Green said. “He was the bar.”
Jerecho Loveall, 30, a former dancer at the bar who had spent nearly every Saturday night there before he was shot in the leg on Saturday, remembered Mr. Rump as “a clean-cut kind of guy” who embraced everyone. Mr. Loveall is a straight man in a polyamorous relationship with his wife and a girlfriend.
“And when he found out about all of that, there was no judgment,” he recalled of Mr. Rump.
Mr. Aston was the “warmest, most loving person,” Ms. Green recalled, adding, “He had friends that would come by the carload just to come and see him bar tend or just to hang out and support.”
“Daniel had this smile that you would see from across the club,” Ms. Green said, “and you would literally be like, ‘Let me find a reason to walk over there,’ just to be closer to Daniel.”
Mr. Aston, a 28-year-old transgender man, moved to Colorado Springs two years ago. Club Q gave him his first job as a bartender. He loved the work, and would often perform at the venue, his mother told The Associated Press.
“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.”
