By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Private Policy and Terms of Use.
Omar had fled Somalia in search of a better life in the U.S. The shooting left her paralyzed.
Kassim Omar, 29, a Black transgender woman who immigrated to the U.S. from Somalia, has died as a result of injuries she sustained in a shooting in 2022.
Omar died September 6 in Columbus, Ohio, The Columbus Dispatchreports. The shooting left her paralyzed from the neck down and incapable of breathing without assistance. Two teenagers have now been charged with murder.
Omar had lived in Columbus since 2015, having come to the U.S. in search of a better life. She had hoped to bring her parents and siblings to Columbus; they are in a refugee camp in Kenya. She has lived in a nursing home since the shooting, which took place at an apartment complex in the Ohio city.
“She had previously loved to dance and sing, get dressed up and go out and just drive around in her car,” the Dispatch reports.
Lara Downing, a social worker and victim’s advocate at Community Refugee and Immigration Services, visited Omar frequently. “She had a voice,” Downing told the newspaper. “Even when her doctors and respirator technicians said that people who are fully ventilator dependent cannot speak, she forced the air through her vocal cords and she spoke, reeducating many of them on what was possible.”
However, Omar was never interviewed by police about the shooting, and she did not get to confront those accused of the crime. “So it is deeply tragic that only now, when her voice has been truly taken from her, will the pursuit of justice resume, and again she will not be heard,” Downing said.
One suspect, Ali Abdullahi, who was 16 at the time of the shooting, was tried as an adult. “He pleaded guilty to felonious assault with a gun specification and was sentenced to seven years in prison in February 2023,” the Dispatch reports. The other suspect, who was 12 years old in 2022, was also charged with felonious assault but was found incompetent to stand trial. The paper did not name him because of his age.
Now both have been charged with murder. “We are going to prosecute them for murder,” Chris Clark, chief juvenile prosecutor in the Franklin County Prosecutor’s office, told the Dispatch. “It’s unbelievably tragic that this happened to her. With all the things she went through to get to this country, and then for this to happen and to live the last parts of her years paralyzed. I can’t imagine what she went through.”
Omar is at least the 27th trans, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming person to die by violence in the U.S. this year. Most have been Black trans women.
“Kassim Omar came to the United States, like millions of people before her, in search of a better life," Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative, said in a press release. “In fact, according to reports, she was working to find a way to bring her parents and family here as well. Unfortunately, her life was cut short as a result of gun violence. Now we will never know what she could have achieved or if she might ever have been reunited with her family. We mourn with all who knew and loved her, especially her chosen family and the trans community in Columbus. She must not be forgotten.”
