London Price, a 26-year-old Black transgender woman, was fatally shot Monday outside her home in northwest Miami-Dade County.
“Family members said Price was first pistol-whipped in front of her grandmother and then shot to death during an argument,” Miami’s NBC affiliate reports.
Police misgendered her and have not released her name, but family members identified her and said she was a trans woman.
She had been living in the home with a former boyfriend, her aunt Nedra Allen told another local station, WPLG. Police have not identified a suspect, but Allen said the ex-boyfriend may have some information about Price’s death.
Allen described her niece as “always beautiful and pretty,” adding, “She’ll give you the shirt off her back, and I think that’s kind of what put her in this situation to get her hurt.”
Whoever killed Price was an “animal,” Allen told the NBC affiliate. “I want justice to be served for London,” she said.
Price is one of more than 20 trans, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming people who have died by violence in the U.S. this year. Most of them have been women of color.
“London had so many friends and family members who loved her but are now filled with grief following her tragic killing,” Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative, said in a press release. “We must stop the epidemic of violence targeting transgender and nonbinary people and the national crisis of gun violence. This crisis is especially treacherous for Black and Brown transgender women.”
HRC found that since it began tracking violent deaths of trans people in 2013, 69.5 percent of those victims were killed with a gun. Also, gun violence was the cause of death for 57.5 percent of those who were killed by a current or former intimate partner, and 76 percent of Black trans women.