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Fayaka Dunbar was acquitted of capital murder in the deaths of popular drag performers London Starr and Bianca Davenport. The Human Rights Campaign has called the acquittal a "grave injustice."
LGBTQ+ activists are calling it an injustice that a Texas man was recently acquitted of murder in the deaths of two drag performers, one a gay man and one a transgender woman, in Fort Worth.
The two were shot in their home December 8, 2017. Jason Bradley, 35, a cisgender gay man who performed in drag as Bianca Davenport (also identified as Bianca Starr), died at the scene, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. London Starr, also known as London Watson, a trans woman and drag performer, was left paralyzed from the middle of her chest down, unable to use her arms or legs, after a bullet hit her spine. She spent the rest of her life in hospice care and died July 2, 2022, at age 40. She was at least the 41st trans person lost to violence in the U.S. in 2022.
Fayaka Dunbar, 32, went to trial in Tarrant County this September on a charge of capital murder. He had gone to the pair’s home for a sex act, the Star-Telegram reports. His attorneys said the shooting was an act of self-defense because of a fight over payment for the act, that the two tried to extort him, and that he feared he would be killed. Tarrant County prosecutor Allenna Bangs said Dunbar was lying and that he “sought out sex workers for robbery because he ‘expects nobody cares about them,’” according to the Human Rights Campaign.
On September 20, after a 10-day trial, the jury found Dunbar not guilty of capital murder. Jurors “also rejected murder, manslaughter, aggravated assault and deadly conduct, the other crimes Judge Ryan Hill included in instructions to the jury under a defense request,” the Star-Telegram reports. If Dunbar had been convicted of capital murder, he would have been automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The prosecution had waived the death penalty.
“The verdict was an extraordinary state court trial outcome,” the Star-Telegram notes. “Most defendants indicted in Tarrant County on capital murder are at trial found guilty of that offense or of a lesser included crime.”
The prosecution faced some difficulties. London Starr died before she could give a deposition in the case, and Jeremy Rhoden, who had been the lead detective, died in 2018, and prosecutors could not find his case file.
“Although the killer was recently found not guilty after arguing self-defense, HRC remains indignant that this horrific act of violence ended the lives of two beloved members of the Fort-Worth LGBTQ+ community,” says an HRC press release. They had been friends since high school in Texarkana, Texas, and had moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area for a more LGBTQ-friendly environment. But anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes were present there as well, HRC notes.
“Nowhere is this hostile environment more visible than in their killer’s trial, where anti-trans and anti-sex worker sentiment was relied upon to belittle and dehumanize London and Bianca,” Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the HRC’s Transgender Justice Initiative, said in the release. “Regardless of this grave injustice, we hold their humanity and their lives as valued, loved, and sacred. We will continue the fight to create a world where what happened to London and Bianca can never happen again.”
