'It's a form of terrorism': London, Ont. reacts to Colorado mass shooting

When Kelly Roy went to sleep Saturday night, she did so coming off the high of a successful party night at Lavish, London’s lone queer nightclub she works at.

But she woke up Sunday morning to a very different mood.

"Our phones were just going off like crazy," said Roy.

Roy isn't a member of the LGBTQ2S+ community herself, but she's deeply ingrained in London's queer community as Lavish's operations director.

Friends and colleagues were frantically messaging her about a deadly shooting that happened the night before at a Colorado Springs gay bar. Five people were killed, and 25 more were injured.

"You feel heartbroken," said Roy. “This is a slap in the face to let us know that they're still not safe."

"It really does feel like you're being targeted for something that is simply who you are," said WG Pearson, chair of Western University's Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, who uses they/them pronouns.

"It's a form of terrorism, in its own way," Pearson said. "If you don't behave the way we want you to behave, if you don't become the person we want you to become, we will attack you."

Lavish is next scheduled to be open Friday night, and Roy says that isn't changing. She said they're comfortable with the space's safety.

"We have security at the door all the time,” she said. “No one is able to bring in a bag.”

"This is not going to change anything for us," added Pearson. "It's going to make us sad. It's going to make us angry, but we're going to persist. We're going to carry on in the face of all of this.”