In a tableau becoming horrifyingly common, a transgender woman of color was found dead in Ohio on July 30, the victim of an apparent homicide.
Skye Mockabee was found unresponsive in a parking lot around 8 a.m. on July 30 in Cleveland, Ohio, reports Cleveland.com. Mockabee had an apparent head-wound, and the individuals who found her called EMS. She was declared dead at the scene. She was 26 years old.
Police are providing few details about Mockabee's death; no suspects have been arrested, and no possible motive for her murder has been given.
Initial reports of Mockabee's death from police, the medical examiner, and local media all misgendered Mockabee and referred to her by her dead name, a situation that is all-too-common when the victims of violence are trans women. It was not released until August 1 that Mockabee was trans.
Friends and family of Mockabee held a vigil on Monday night to honor her memory.
Skye is the 17th trans person known to have been murdered in the United States so far this year, with the vast majority of them black trans women. Her murder comes less than a week after another black trans woman, Dee Whigham, was
Cleveland made news last month when, just before the opening of the Republican National Convention, it approved a local ordinance allowing trans people to use restrooms and other public facilities in concordance with their gender identity.
Trans women of color face incredible levels of homicide in the U.S., and the number of trans women of color murdered has been rising at a terrifying rate over the last several years. More than half of anti-LGBT hate murders are trans woman of color, specifically black trans women.
It is believed that many more trans women of color are murdered than are reported in the media each year, as many police departments and media outlets fail to identify victims as transgender. Still, the overall rate of anti-trans hate crimes rose by 13 percent between 2013 and 2014, according to the most recent statistics from the FBI.
In 2015, the deadliest year on record for the transgender community, at least 21 trans people were known to have been murdered in the U.S. With five months left in the year, and with the wave of violence against trans women of color showing no sign of abating, 2016 is poised to prove even deadlier.
[Reposted from The Advocate.]
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