A transgender woman’s body was found dumped in a Chicago garbage bin five days after her family reported her missing.
Tatiana Labelle, 33, was beaten to death before her body was left in an alley in the Chatham neighborhood of the city.
“It is heartbreaking for someone to beat her to death and throw her in the trash like she was garbage,” said her sister Shameika Thomas.
And she added: “I loved my sister whether she was transgender or not, and I would like for me and my family to have justice.”
Activists say that Labelle is the seventh trans person to be murdered in the city in 2022.
And Iggy Ladden, director of the Chicago Therapy Collective, said the number is likely to be even higher because the crimes are severely underreported.
A neighbour, who did not want to be identified, told WLS-TV that her body was found “after the garbage people pulled it up and the garbage flipped over, and everything fell out.”
The Cook County medical examiner performed an autopsy and found that Labelle’s death was caused by “multiple injuries due to assault,” and ruled it a homicide.
Police have so far not yet made any arrests.
The Human Rights Campaign says that a record 57 transgender people or gender non-conforming people fatally shot or killed by other violent means in 2021, with five of those in Chicago.
“While the details of these cases differ, it is clear that fatal violence disproportionately affects transgender women of color—particularly Black transgender women—and that the intersections of racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and unchecked access to guns conspire to deprive them of employment, housing, healthcare and other necessities,” the campaign wrote in a blog post.
The death of Labelle came just days after the body of Elise Malary, a Black transgender activist, was found washed up on the rocks of Lake Michigan in the Chicago suburb of Evanston.
The cause and manner of her death have not been made public.
