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Kiesha Jenkins, 22, was fatally shot in the back in Philadelphia early Tuesday morning — marking the city's second homicide of a transgender woman of color in the last five months.
Far from a local trend, Jenkins is the 18th transgender woman of color or gender-nonconforming person of color in the U.S. killed in a homicide this year. Anti-violence experts say the killings, which have spiked in 2015, are a national epidemic.
“These murders are happening in incredibly violent situations to a very small population, over and over again, from one coast to the next,” said Helen Fitzpatrick, director of LGBT affairs in the Philadelphia mayor’s office.
"We just continuously see this violence go by in the media, and it hits close to home far too often, but it is throughout the entire nation,” the former prosecutor said in an interview with BuzzFeed News.
Jenkins had gotten out of a car at around 2:30 a.m. in North Philadelphia, according to Fitzpatrick, who attended a police briefing with reporters Tuesday afternoon. Captain James Clark said an investigation found five or six men assaulted Jenkins, and while she lay on the ground, one of the men shot her twice in the back.
“There is no arrest, and we do not know at this time if this murder is potentially a hate crime," the Philadelphia Police Department said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.
Officer Tanya Little added in an email that “the motive is unknown” and that homicide investigators are looking into whether Jenkin’s gender identity was a factor in the homicide.
In 2014, 13 transgender women of color were killed in the U.S. — all but two of whom were black or Latina. So far in 2015, 20 transgender or gender nonconforming people have been killed in homicides, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. Eighteen of those victims were people of color.
London Kiki Chanel, a 21-year-old transgender woman, was stabbed to death in North Philadelphia in May.
The most recent victim before Jenkins was found dead Monday in Detroit from a gunshot wound. Melvin, who has not been identified publicly with a last name, identified as a gay man but would dress as a woman while working, according to Julisa Abab, a transgender advocate and a friend of Melvin.
“My concern is that we are being targeted," Abab told BuzzFeed News.
Whether a person identifies as transgender or appears to be gender-nonconforming is irrelevant, she said. “The assailants don’t know the difference between a cross dresser and a trans woman.”
Trans women and LGBT people of color experience a greater risk of homicide than LGBT people as a whole, according to a June report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. The report found hate-motivated violence against LGBT people dropped 32% overall in 2014 compared with the previous year, but hate-motivated violence against transgender people rose 13%.
“All murders are serious,” Fitzpatrick stressed, but she noted that homicides of transgender women of color are “continuously happening to a very small portion of our population at a terrifying rate. It demands a response from society as a whole.”
Philadelphia police are asking anyone with information about Jenkins's death to contact homicide detectives at (215) 686-3334.
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