Aerrion
Burnett, a 37-year-old Black transgender woman, was shot to death Saturday in
Independence, Mo., becoming the 27th known trans homicide victim of 2020.
Burnett, who
lived in nearby Kansas City, was found dead on the side of the road about 3:40
a.m., TV station KMBC reports. It was two days before her 38th
birthday.
Friends and
family members held a vigil for her the next day. “Aerrion was a Barbie,”
friend Korea Kelly said at the service, according to another local TV
station, KCTV. “She was a goddess. Can you hear me? Fun! When I
say goddess, she was everything. If you wanted to have a good day, you need to
smile, Aerrion was the person you wanted by your side.”
There have
been several homicides of trans women in the Kansas City area in the past few
years, including Brooklyn Lindsey and Brianna Hill in 2019. And Burnett’s
closest friend, Dee Dee Pearson, was killed Christmas Eve of 2011 by a man with
whom she’d had sex; he didn’t learn she was trans until afterward, and he
became so enraged that shot her to death. The man, Kenyan Jones, was convicted of second-degree murder and armed
criminal action, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
“As a friend,
and both of those are my friends who both got killed the same way, and being a
black trans woman myself, that hurts like hell,” Kelly told KCTV. “It’s a pain
that I can’t fathom. It’s a pain that I don’t know how to fathom or to tell
anyone how I’m feeling.”
“I find the
continued news of Black trans women, and Black femme-identified members of our
community, being murdered at an extreme rate to be beyond comprehension and
deserving of our collective effort to bring about a dramatic and immediate end
to this unique form of Black pain,” David Johns, executive director of the
National Black Justice Coalition, said in a press release. “Black trans people,
Black trans women in particular deserve our protection — they deserve to live
without fear of being discriminated against or murdered. Until this is their
reality, ensuring that they are safe is on all of us.”
“Black
transgender women are being killed at horrifying rates in this country,” added
Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative. “HRC
has already seen as many violent deaths of trans and gender-nonconforming people
this year as we tracked all of last year. This level of violence is staggering,
and it cannot continue. We need everyone — from community organizers to those
in the highest levels of our government — to take action to end this epidemic
of violence. I and everyone in the trans community are mourning Aerrion’s
death. As we remember her, we continue to call for justice for all trans and
gender-nonconforming people.”
Independence
police are asking for anyone with information about the crime to call its tips hotline,
(816) 474-TIPS. NBJC also recommended contacting the Independence Police
Department “to demand a complete, fair, and public investigation” by calling
(816) 325-7777 or emailing leads@indepmo.org.
SOURCE: ADVOCATE DOT COM
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