Trans woman Sasha Williams stabbed to death in Las Vegas

Sasha Williams, a transgender woman of color praised by loved ones for her big heart, was stabbed to death in Las Vegas in January. She was 36. Her death is only now being reported widely.

Williams was killed on a city street the morning of January 26, theLas Vegas Review-Journalreports. Hassan Malik Howard, 20, was arrested shortly afterward at his family’s home. He is charged with murder. Authorities are trying to determine if he is competent to stand trial; two doctors have said he is not.

He and Williams had been seen quarreling before the stabbing. “Witnesses described the female victim as running down the sidewalk carrying a pink baseball bat and yelling for someone to call the police,” says an arrest report viewed by the Review-Journal.

Williams, who grew up in Raleigh, N.C., came out as trans in her teens. She was an only child, and she was brought up by a single father. It was difficult for him to accept her trans identity, but he eventually did, and they were close, her aunt Tina Thornton told the paper.

Williams spent some time in a men’s prison on an assault charge during her transition. Resuming the transition process “was pretty intense for her,” her friend David Leach told the Review-Journal.

Leach met Williams in 2021 through the Las Vegas ballroom scene. “She really stuck out in my head for some reason,” he told the publication. “And I was like, ‘I really like this girl: She’s something different, something special.’” They soon became “inseparable,” he said.

Leach and Thornton said they spoke to Williams every day. She was a hair, nail, and makeup artist, and she designed many of her clothes, Leach said. She hoped to become a performer in Las Vegas.

The two also praised Williams’s generosity, saying she sent baskets of treats to them when they were ill and that she often paid studio fees for her musician friends.

But she recently lost her home and her dogs, and she became depressed and distant, they said. Thornton urged her to return to North Carolina.

Police have not stated a motive for the crime. “She died in cold blood, in broad daylight, in the middle of the street in Las Vegas,” Leach said. “I just have this big question mark that just lays in my head all the time on that — what happened?”

“My heart breaks for Sasha’s family, her friends, and for her community —it is clear Sasha was fighting hard to better herself against long odds,” Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative, said in a press release. “Yet again, we find ourselves mourning a life that ended far too soon.”

Williams is at least the 10^th trans, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming person known to have died by violence this year.