April 23 (UPI) — The Atlanta Police Department announced it is actively investigating three incidents of violence against transgender women that have occurred this year, including two that led to the deaths of two transgender women.
The first of three incidents happened around 11:16 p.m. on Jan. 9 and has remained a mystery. In that incident, officers responded to a 911 call of a person shot at 444 Highland Ave. and found the transgender woman with a gunshot wound, the department said in a statement on Facebook.
She was transported to a hospital in critical condition. and her condition was not immediately known. Her identity was not provided.
The other two incidents both occurred this month, about three miles apart, and were fatal.
In the first of those, officers responded to 415 Fairburn Rd. S.W. at about 4:22 a.m. on April 11 and found a transgender woman who had suffered a gunshot wound and was unresponsive. She was pronounced dead at the scene and was later identified as 37-year-old hairstylist Ashley Burton.
The second fatal incident happened on April 18 around 10:42 p.m. Officers arrived at the scene of a person shot at 2457 Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. S.W., to find a transgender woman unresponsive before she was pronounced dead.
Investigators determined that the shootings on Jan. 9 and April 11 were the result of disputes. A possible motive for the April 18 shooting was not provided, though the victim was identified by her family to WSB-TV as Koko Williams, a 35-year-old musical artist who was set to have a song appear in the Showtime series “The Chi.”
Williams was a music artist who is set to have a song appear on the Showtime series The Chi. She previously appeared in a recently released documentary Kokomo City, which follows the lives of four Black transgender sex workers.
“While these individual incidents are unrelated, we are very aware of the epidemic-level violence black and brown transgender women face in America,” police officials said.
“We understand the impact violence has on all our communities and we understand some acts of violence bring about legitimate concerns of whether the incident was motivated by hate. We share in these concerns and our investigations include exploring that possibility.”
Police said there is no indication that any of the three victims were targeted for being transgender or members of the LGBTQ+ community. The cases also do not appear to be random acts of violence.
The Atlanta Police Department asks that anyone with information on these cases call the Atlanta Crime Stoppers Tip Line at 404-577-8477 or www.StopCrimeAtl.org. They are offering a $2,000 reward for tips that lead to an arrest and indictment.
