Just two weeks into the new year, two transgender people of color have already lost their lives to violence in the United States. The death of a third individual is currently under investigation.
Tyianna Alexander, a 28-year-old Black, transgender woman who sometimes went by the nickname “Davarea,” was shot and killed in the Gresham Auburn district of south side Chicago on January 6. According to the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, Alexander was shot in the head by an unidentified gunman driving a silver vehicle on the 800 block of West 75th Street.
The altercation reportedly took place around 5a.m., and Alexander is said to have died at the scene. A friend who was present during the shooting, Brandon Gowdy, was transported to Chicago Medical Center after being shot in the arm and succumbed to his injuries during his brief hospitalization.
Alexander, whose death marked the first recorded trans homicide in 2021, was celebrated by friends and community members following her untimely passing. In a statement released by the National Black Justice Coalition, trans advocate and longtime friend Beverly Ross remembered her as someone who “loved to dance, had a great sense of humor, enjoyed life when she could, and just wanted to be able to ‘vibe and thrive.’”
“I am really tired of seeing us get killed,” Ross added in the press release.
LaSaia Wade, executive director of the Chicago-based advocacy group Brave Space Alliance, echoed those sentiments in comments shared with them. She remembered Alexander, who was a client of the organization, as “the life of the party, that person that made you want to dance even when the music and everything was horrible.”
Wade added that Alexander’s loss was a particularly difficult burden for Chicago’s trans community to bear after the murder of another Black, trans woman just weeks earlier: Courtney “Eshay” Key, a 25-year-old who was reportedly killed on Christmas Day. Key’s death accounted for one of the 44 trans lives lost to violence in 2020, the highest number on record since the Human Rights Campaign first began tracking anti-trans homicides.
“Both of the ladies were youth here in Chicago and high spirit, trying to figure life out as trans women,” Wade said in email. “Losing these to babies hit us hard, especially while we are building community with each other.”
A memorial for Alexander is planned Friday. Wade noted that Brave Space Alliance has been helping to pay for funeral costs through a successful crowdfunding effort, as both Key and Alexander were uninsured at the time of the deaths and “in survival mode.” Although the campaign is ongoing, she said that the organization had raised enough to ensure Alexander will have a proper sendoff.
“When the world couldn’t give it, we did it in death,” she said, “which should never be the case.”
Just three days after Alexander’s passing, a second transgender person was killed in Puerto Rico: Samuel Edmund Damián Valentín, a trans man whose age was not identified in media coverage. According to the LGBTQ+ newspaper Washington Blade, Damián’s remains were discovered in the middle of a roadway in the San Juan suburb of Trujillo Alto. A driver reportedly struck him, thinking that his body was debris that had blown into the road.
Damián allegedly died as a result of sustaining several gunshot wounds, and neither his killer nor a motive have yet been identified by police.
Pedro Julio Serrano, a longtime Puerto Rican activist, has called for the killing to be investigated as a hate crime after the deaths of six other trans people in the island commonwealth within the past year. These names include Neulisa Luciano Ruiz, Yampi Méndez Arocho, Layla Pelaez Sánchez, Penélope Díaz Ramírez, and Michelle Michellyn Ramos Vargas, the vast majority of whom were trans women of color.
