Dana Martin, 31, identified by advocacy groups as a black transgender woman, was found shot to death in a vehicle in Montgomery, Alabama, on Sunday.
Martin, who lived in Hope Hull, Alabama, about 9 miles southwest of Montgomery, was well-known in the transgender community of Birmingham and Montgomery, said Meta Ellis, director of Montgomery Pride United, an LGBT advocacy organization in Alabama.
“Our community is devastated because the murders going on — especially of trans people of color — are just happening more and more often and very little is being done about it,” she said. “And here in Alabama we don’t have laws that support hate crimes against people of other genders.”
It is still unclear why Martin was killed. There have not been any arrests in the case and there aren’t any suspects or known motives, said Capt. Regina Duckett of the Montgomery Police Department, which is investigating the crime.
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“At this point, the circumstances of Dana Martin’s homicide are unknown,” Duckett said Friday. “The death is confirmed as a criminal homicide.”
Martin’s body was discovered when police and fire medics responded to a vehicle crash on Brewer Road around 11 p.m. Sunday, police said. Emergency workers found Martin in the vehicle, which was in the ditch line. Martin, the driver, had a fatal gunshot wound, police said, and it appeared as if the shooting had occurred near the vehicle.
Based on their review of legal documents and a forensic examination, police did not identify Martin as a woman in their news release, Duckett said.
How a homicide victim identifies is “a personal matter that becomes relevant to our investigation only if it is determined to be a reason the victim was killed,” Duckett added.
In Alabama, changing gender identity on a driver’s license requires gender-affirming surgery, Ellis said, something many transgender people don’t find necessary or are unable to afford.
At least 26 transgender people were killed in 2018, the majority of them black transgender women, according to the Human Rights Campaign. In 2017, advocates reported at least 29 transgender people fatally shot or killed by other violent means.
Crimes against transgender people, including harassment and sexual assault, are often underreported, which can stem from victims’ reluctance to speak with law enforcement. In addition, officials, the news media or even the victims’ family members may refer to victims by the sex they were assigned at birth rather than by the gender with which they identify.
“Sometimes their family will put them right back into their old gender and have a service and it’s heartbreaking,” said Ms. Harvey McDaniel, educational outreach director for Montgomery Pride United. “This is pretty common.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.