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HRC Mourns Dee Whigham
Dee Whigham, a 25-year-old transgender woman of color, was killed on July 23 in St. Martin, Mississippi.
Dee was a registered nurse at a hospital in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and was visiting St. Martin to attend the Gulf Coast Black Rodeo with friends and co-workers, according to the Sun Herald. She was killed at Best Western Plus Cypress Creek hotel. Police are seeking a person of interest and are not ruling out whether to designate her murder as a hate crime.
Across the U.S., at least 14 transgender people have been murdered since the beginning of 2016. Over 90 percent of the victims are people of color and over three quarters are women. HRC’s own tracking shows that 59 percent of known transgender homicide victims in the United States since 2013 have died as a result of gun violence. In Addressing Transgender Violence, released last November, HRC and the Trans People of Color Coalition wrote that racism and sexism compound the risk of violence for transgender women of color.
HRC extends its deepest condolences to the friends and family of Ms. Whigham.
For more information on addressing anti-transgender violence, visit hrc.org/trans-violence.
www.hrc.org/blog/hrc-mourns-dee-whigham?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed
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