Black transgender woman gunned down in Chicago

A Black transgender woman was gunned down in public on a Chicago street, and her family is asking for the murder to be investigated as a hate crime, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

She is the 26th known transgender or gender-nonconforming person to die by violence in 2024.

Redd, 25, who was also known as Barbie to her friends, was shot multiple times in the back after a lone gunman opened fire on Redd and a group of friends around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday on the city’s West Side. She was pronounced dead at the scene. A second unidentified victim aged 34 was taken to a local hospital in critical condition suffering from a single gunshot wound to the chest, according to police.

A friend of Redd’s, Michelle Lee, told the outlet the pair gathered with other friends on a street corner on Sunday morning when a man they did not recognize walked past their group to talk with a girl in another group nearby. He then left the area, but Lee said the man returned about 30 minutes later with a gun and opened fire.

She said everyone ran after the first shot and that the man continued to shoot as they fled the scene. When they returned, they found Redd lying motionless on the sidewalk.

“We all just started crying,” Lee said.

Redd reportedly suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the back and legs, and police reported finding 15 shell casings at the scene. Despite the violent and hateful nature of the crime, police have yet to investigate Redd’s murder as a hate crime. And her family is asking questions.

“I do feel like it was a hate crime,” Redd’s cousin Mariyah Phillips told the Sun-Times. “I want to start [bringing] awareness [that] people are really attacking that community. I want people to know that they are being attacked.”

Redd was one of three people murdered in Chicago on Sunday. She is the first trans woman to die by violence in the city this year, but one of at least 14 transgender or gender-nonconforming individuals to die by violence in Chicago since 2016, according to the Sun-Times. Most of those cases remain unsolved.

Her friends remembered Redd as a kind and loving person.

“She wanted to be loved and respected,” Trevon Pope, a friend, said. “That’s how she was. That’s one thing she didn’t play about. She loved and respected people.”