(COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.) — Within hours of the mass shooting in Colorado Springs that left five people dead and at least 19 injured, support services have been set up for the victims, their families and the LGBTQ community at large.

Members of the Colorado Springs community have mobilized, launching fundraisers to help cover medical and funeral expenses and sharing locations of where blood can be donated.

Additionally, mental health services are being offered to anyone affected by the attack at Club Q, a nightclub that primarily serves LGBTQ patrons.

Here are some ways to support the effort and resources for those in need:

Monetary donations

Several groups have set up fundraisers, where people can donate to help cover medical and funeral costs as well as to provide help to families in the aftermath.

Club Q shared a link on its Facebook page Sunday afternoon to an official donation site run by Colorado Gives 365.

Colorado Gives 365 is run by the Colorado Healing Fund, a non-profit that sets up donations for those who are the victims of mass casualties in the state as well as their families, which was activated in the wake of the shooting.

Additionally, the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe has verified at least four fundraisers.

Blood donations

Vitalant, a nonprofit organization that collects blood donations, shared on Facebook that it sent out 70 units of blood products to hospitals in the area.

“Our hearts go out to the victims of the Club Q shooting and their loved ones,” Vitalant said in a statement. “We stand ready to provide additional blood products if requested.”

The group said donors who want to make appointments in the coming days can do so online or by calling 1-877-25-VITAL (84825).

Additionally, people can donate at blood donation centers at Children’s Hospital Colorado at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora or at UC Health Garth Englund Blood Center in Fort Collins, which helps support patients in northern Colorado.

Mental health services

The city of Colorado Springs announced on its website that the Colorado Springs Police Department will be holding a Community Resource Expo on Monday, November 21; Tuesday, November 22; and Wednesday, November 23 from 8:00 a.m. MT to 7:00 p.m. MT.

“The expo will provide mental health resources, spiritual support, emotional support animals, childcare, emergency financial resources, LGBTQ+ support, meals, and other services,” the site reads.

Additionally, the city has a rolling list of providers offering therapy to those impacted by the shooting, including some offering free sessions. As of Monday morning, 102 providers were listed.

Club Q shared on Facebook that a drop-in center is being set up at the Satellite Hotel in Colorado Springs.

“GLAAD and One Colorado will be on site all week to provide counseling services or if you just need to be with family or just need a hug,” the post read.

UC Health recommends if someone is experiencing a mental health crisis, they can call 911; 988, a new nationwide number specifically for those suffering from suicidal thoughts; or The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and mental health support group for LGBTQ youth.

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(NEW YORK) — Sam Olbekson was first exposed to architecture at age five, when his uncle was a construction worker on a project to build the Minneapolis American Indian Center.

Decades later, Olbekson, 51, now runs his own architecture firm, Full Circle Indigenous Planning. He’s also MAIC’s board president, designing an addition to the building which will begin construction next month.

A citizen of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe in Minnesota, Olbekson split his childhood between the area’s reservations and urban Native American populations, observing and experiencing their impoverished living conditions. Inspired by his childhood interest in art, math, and social justice, he went onto study architecture in college and later earned a graduate degree in urban design.

“I can come back now to tribal communities and do that large scale master planning,” he said. “Architecture is about an individual building. But designing the entire community was a goal of mine.”

Olbekson currently works with Native clients across the country on projects ranging from schools to clinics, centering Indigenous cultural values and perspectives on environmental sustainability.

After Native Americans were forcibly displaced from, even killed on their land, then relegated to scattered reservations, Olbekson said architecture today can reinforce tribes’ legal sovereignty over their land as well as their “cultural sovereignty,” both reflecting their traditions and envisioning their future.

“It’s about what the next seven generations will need to thrive as contemporary Native American nations.” he said. “Shaping your built environment is so important to any community because our environment shapes us.”

Designing buildings that build community

In the past, Olbekson said many non-Native architects have assumed the role of “outside experts” designing for, not with, tribal communities, failing to meet their unique cultural needs as a result.

Instead, Olbekson said his approach maintains his clients’ authorship over their projects, engaging tribes’ political and cultural leaders, as well as local artists and builders.

“I always start off by not drawing, but just simply asking, ‘What is the meaning of this place? Who are you as a people?'” he said.

For example, Olbekson said the Minneapolis American Indian Center, which houses an art gallery, was originally designed in a brutalist style with sharp angles.

“But those angular spaces don’t really work for gathering,” which Olbekson noted is key to many Native cultures.

He observed the building was also very “introverted,” lacking a “clear sense of entry” connecting it to the broader neighborhood.

“Tribal communities usually have a welcoming song, and there’s a ceremony about that. So how can a building have this sense of ceremonial welcoming?” he said.

Their solution, Olbekson said, was to create an open floor plan, making the building “one space” rather than multiple siloed rooms. The redesign also features large windows and a round, central gathering space that flows into other areas, including a café serving Indigenous food.

When designing Mino-bimaadiziwin Apartments, an affordable housing project for the Red Lake Nation in Minneapolis, Olbekson said he similarly contemplated how a six-story 110-unit building could express the community’s cultural values.

“How do you design streets that create connections rather than cul de sacs that create divisions?” he said. “How do you create a neighborhood?”

To start, they ensured the apartments included larger units to accommodate Indigenous family structures where, often, six to eight people live in the same intergenerational household.

But beyond apartments, the building also houses other facilities, including the Red Lake Nation Embassy, a wellness clinic, basketball court, community kitchen, daycare, garden with medicinal plants and a room where residents can take online classes at the tribal college.

Such multi-service hubs are essential to Native communities, who disproportionately lack access to stable housing and safe, reliable transportation, Olbekson said.

He noted they also reflect Indigenous views on the inextricability of shelter, food, recreation, healthcare, education and their holistic necessity for a community’s overall growth and well-being.

At the groundbreaking for Mino-Bimaadiziwin, which means “live the good life” in Ojibwe, Red Lake Tribal Chairman Darrell Seki told the crowd: “This building is for you. For you to take care of your families, your children, the next generation.”

Part of a system

Sustainable, regenerative design is also paramount to many tribes who’ve traditionally built their structures from materials in their environments, tying to their creation stories, Olbekson said.

“Each culture has a different way of thinking about the land, but the commonalities are that everything is related, that we exist with the land, not on the land,” he said. “We’re part of a system.”

Accordingly, Olbekson said they built Mino-bimaadiziwin Apartments using the Red Lake Nation’s local cedar timber, signifying their reservation’s location in the Northwest Minnesota woods, and incorporated motifs from nature into the building’s interior aesthetic — for example, fractal patterns and cool tones representing the tribe’s Turtle Clan.

But respecting the land and topography also means knowing where not to build, Olbekson said.

While designing several projects along a confluence of rivers called Bdote, Olbekson said they deliberately located the Wakan Tipi Center at a distance from its namesake and Dakota sacred site Wakan Tipi Cave to honor its sanctity.

In traditional times, sacred sites were all connected around this river landscape, he said, but “in modern times, they’re separated by highways and bridges, different arbitrary city borders.”

Olbekson said by “decolonizing the process” and removing those borders, the project could place jurisdictional authority and cultural direction into the hands of the Dakota people, the land’s original stewards.

Ideally, Olbekson said every tribal nation would have an architect from their own community. But the American Institute of Architects reported that less than 0.44% of their members were Indigenous in 2021.

To increase the ranks of Native architects and awareness of the profession, Olbekson, an American Indian Council of Architects and Engineers board member, said he always offers to speak with students at schools in tribal communities whenever he works on a project.

“Then they can see someone that looks like them, that has their history, maybe the challenges they’re experiencing right now and see that it’s possible, this is a thing that is reachable for them,” he said.

“As designers, we shape our schools,” he added. “But those schools, in turn, shape our future generations. Our buildings are shaping future cultural leaders.”

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(COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.) — A 22-year-old is set to be charged with hate crimes for allegedly killing five people and injuring many others with a legally purchased assault-style rifle at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado, according to officials briefed on the investigation.

The suspect, Anderson Lee Aldrich, allegedly began shooting as soon as he walked into Club Q in Colorado Springs late Saturday night, Colorado Springs Police Chief Adrian Vasquez said.

At least two people, whom authorities described as heroes, then confronted Aldrich and fought with him, which saved more lives, police said.

During a press conference on Monday, police identified Thomas James and Richard Fierro as the people who stopped the suspected gunman. Fierro was in the U.S. Army for 14 years and served in Iraq three times and Afghanistan once, Army spokesperson Sgt. Pablo Saez told ABC News.

Seventeen people were injured from gunshot wounds, police said.

Aldrich is facing five counts of murder and five counts of bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury, which is Colorado’s hate crime law.

Watch Colorado Gov. Jared Polis discuss the deadly shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub tomorrow on “The View.”

A second gun was also recovered at the scene, police said. Aldrich had “considerable ammo” and was “extremely well armed,” Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers told “Good Morning America” on Monday.

Among those killed was Daniel Aston.

“He was smart, he was funny, he was talented. He was an amazing human being,” Aston’s fiance, Wyatt Kent, told ABC News.

When gunfire erupted in the club, Kent said two people fell on top of him, protecting him.

Kent said a woman who fell on him “was moaning,” and he told her to “keep squeezing my hand.” She had been shot in the chest and “passed away on top of me,” he said.

Kent credits that woman for saving his life.

The first 911 call came in at 11:56 p.m. Saturday and an officer was dispatched to the scene seconds later, Lt. Pamela Castro, spokesperson for the Colorado Springs Police Department, told reporters. The first officer arrived at midnight, and the suspect was detained by 12:02 a.m., Castro said.

Bartender Michael Anderson told ABC News he heard pops, and when he looked up he saw “the shadow of a grown man wielding a rifle.”

Anderson said he ducked down and heard glass shatter and bottles break. He said he then ran outside to the patio to hide.

“It was absolute chaos. People were running, screaming. And the screaming intensified as people became aware of what was happening,” he said. “No one ever expected that here.”

“I am haunted by some of the things I saw,” he said.

Aldrich was injured and remains in the hospital, police said. Medical personnel will determine when he is released to authorities, Castro said.

The court has sealed the arrest warrant and supporting documentation connected with Aldrich’s arrest. According to the motion by prosecutors, if the records were “released, it could jeopardize the ongoing case investigation.”

Aldrich was arrested in a June 2021 bomb threat incident after the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office was alerted that he was in possession of a homemade bomb, law enforcement officers briefed on the investigation told ABC News. He was charged with two counts of felony menacing and three counts of first-degree kidnapping, but no explosives were found in his home, Colorado Springs radio station KRDO reported.

Aldrich’s 2021 arrest may not have appeared on background checks because the case does not appear to have been adjudicated, according to officials briefed on the investigation.

ABC News and other news organizations have petitioned the court in Colorado to unseal the records about Aldrich’s 2021 arrest.

Colorado’s red flag law, which went into effect in 2020, allows relatives, household members and law enforcement to ask a judge to order the seizure of a gun owner’s weapons if that owner is believed to be a risk to themself or others.

It is unclear whether the law would have stopped the suspect from targeting the club, El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder told ABC News.

Elder did not recall the circumstances surrounding Aldrich’s 2021 arrest, he said.

Club Q is a safe haven for the LGBTQ community, the police chief said. The club hosts a weekly drag show and live DJ on Saturday nights, according to its website.

The owner of Club Q, Nic Grzecka, told ABC News that they didn’t recognize the suspect and had never seen him inside their business.

Active shooter protocol was also activated, Grzecka said, which is something Club Q has had in place since the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.

“Our prayers and thoughts are with all the victims and their families and friends,” the club said in a statement posted on Facebook. “We thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack.”

The shooting unfolded on the eve of the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.

President Joe Biden said in a statement that “the LGBTQI+ community has been subjected to horrific hate violence in recent years,” drawing comparisons to the Pulse nightclub shooting.

“Places that are supposed to be safe spaces of acceptance and celebration should never be turned into places of terror and violence. Yet it happens far too often,” Biden said. “We must drive out the inequities that contribute to violence against LGBTQI+ people. We cannot and must not tolerate hate.”

Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper tweeted that the LGBTQ community needs to be protected from “this hate.”

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet tweeted that he was “sending strength to those who were injured, the survivors, and Colorado’s LGBTQ community.”

“As we seek justice for this unimaginable act, we must do more to protect the LGBTQ community and stand firm against discrimination and hate in every form,” Bennet said.

“Our hearts are broken for the victims of the horrific tragedy in Colorado Springs, and their loved ones.” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement Sunday. “This unspeakable attack has robbed countless people of their friends and family and an entire community’s sense of safety. You can draw a straight line from the false and vile rhetoric about LGBTQ people spread by extremists and amplified across social media, to the nearly 300 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year, to the dozens of attacks on our community like this one.”

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said, “My heart breaks for the family and friends of those lost, injured and traumatized.”

ABC News’ Luke Barr, Matt Gutman, Teddy Grant, Jenna Harrison, Ahmad Hemingway, Luis Martinez, Amanda Morris, Molly Nagle, Alyssa Pone, Robert Zepeda and Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.

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