18 Transgender Killings This Year Raise Fears of an 'Epidemic'
ATLANTA — In the most recent killing of a transgender woman, her body was found inside an abandoned car, burned beyond recognition. In another case, the woman was pulled from a lake at a Dallas park. And in a third, she was found dead near a golf course, just weeks after she survived a brutal beating that was captured on video.
In the United States this year, at least 18 transgender people — most of them transgender women of color — have been killed in a wave of violence that the American Medical Association has declared an “epidemic.” The killings, which have been reported across the country, have heightened fears and alarm among communities already familiar with looming threats to their safety.
“It’s always in the forefront of our minds, when we’re leaving home, going to work, going to school,” said Kayla Gore, who lives in Memphis. “Guys were flirting with me at the gas station, and the first thought was, ‘This could go horribly wrong.’”
The killings this year follow at least 26 recorded last year by the Human Rights Campaign. But transgender advocates acknowledged that those figures fail to grasp the full extent of the perils the community faces, as data provided by law enforcement officials can be incomplete and many crimes are never reported.
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