Transgender woman and Trevor Project volunteer Liara Kaylee Tsai killed in Minnesota

Liara Kaylee Tsai, a 35-year-old transgender woman who was a well-regarded Trevor Project volunteer, was killed in Minnesota last week, and her former romantic partner is charged with second-degree murder.

Tsai, who lived in Minneapolis, was found in the back seat of a car driven by that partner, Margot Lewis, last Saturday when the car crashed into a guardrail in Minnesota’s Olmsted County, about 100 miles southeast of Minneapolis, according to several local media outlets.

Olmsted County sheriff’s deputies arrived at the scene of the single-vehicle accident and found Lewis sitting in a lawn chair in the median of Interstate 90, Minnesota Public Radio reports. “Two people who stopped to offer help told police they saw a dead person in the back seat,” MPR explains. The deputies determined the person was not killed in the car crash. She was wrapped in bedding, a mattress, and covered in a tarp, with a puncture wound on her neck and she was cold to the touch.” Investigators went to Tsai’s apartment in Minneapolis and found her bed and bedclothes were soaked in blood.

In Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, Lewis is charged with two counts of second-degree murder, and in Olmsted County, she is charged with “felony interference with a dead body or scene of death,” according to McClatchy Newspapers. She is being held in Hennepin County on $1 million bond.

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Authorities do not believe the crime had anything to do with anti-trans bias, as Lewis is trans as well, they told MPR.

Lewis was visiting Tsai from North Liberty, Iowa, TV station KGAN reports. Tsai had recently moved from Iowa City, which is near North Liberty, to Minneapolis. She was a music producer and club DJ, and she had already gained an enthusiastic following in her six weeks in the Twin Cities, Minnesota TV station KARE notes.

“I was so excited and so happy to see her move up to the Twin Cities. It was something she had been wanting to do for years, and her music was her life, her music was her soul,” her friend Olivia Anderson told KARE. “If you met Liara, it’s an experience you will remember and hold with you for the rest of your life. She had a huge impact on my life and who I am.”

“She was the most fearless person I’ve ever met,” another friend, Mega Solga, told the station. “She was the truest person I ever met. She knew exactly who she was, especially as a trans woman. She had no fear showing the world who she was.”

Tsai was also a military combat veteran, a spoken-word artist, and a crisis counselor with the Trevor Project, the mental health and suicide prevention organization focusing on LGBTQ+ youth.

“Liara was a valued member of our 988 Crisis Intervention team and part of our Trevor community,” the Trevor Project posted on its LinkedIn page. “She is remembered by our team for her empowering gentleness and remarkable ability to center the feelings and experiences of LGBTQ+ young people. Liara saved lives through her crisis intervention work, and we are heartbroken that the world has lost an incredibly bright light far too soon.”