Monika Diamond, a 34-year-old transgender LGBT+ activist and businesswoman, was shot and killed on Wednesday, March 18 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Multiple shots had been fired before police and ambulance were dispatched in response to a disturbance call. After attempting to revive her, Diamond was pronounced dead at the scene. According to Maya Oppenheim, Women’s Correspondent for the Independent, the shooter has been identified as 34-year-old Prentice Bess who has already been arrested and charged with murder.
Elliot Kozuch, press secretary at Human Rights Campaign, said that Diamond was “a chosen mother to countless,” as well as a “business owner, a loving friend, and she did not deserve to have her life taken from her.” According to the HRC, Diamond’s death is the fourth violent of a “transgender or gender non-conforming person this year alone.”
Kozuch also notes that, “There is an epidemic of violence against the transgender and non-binary community, and especially against black transgender women. There are currently very few explicit federal legal protections for transgender or gender-expansive people.” And that, “the intersections of racism, transphobia, sexism, biphobia and homophobia conspire to deprive them of necessities to live and thrive. Human Rights Campaign will continue to hold the Trump-Pence administration and all elected officials who fuel the flames of hate accountable at the ballot box.”
Sources: Independent 3/23, Human Rights Campaign 3/2020
