A suspect is
due in court Thursday to face charges in the death of Seattle transgender woman
Zoella Martinez, who was found fatally shot in an alley September 1.
Martinez, 20,
had gone the night before to meet Jacaree Rashad Hardy in an attempt to recover
the $1,100 she believed he had fraudulently withdrawn from her bank
account, The Seattle Times reports. She had arranged for
a friend to stay nearby when she met Hardy in a parking lot. When the friend
arrived, she saw Martinez sitting in a car with another person at the wheel.
The driver sped off, and when Martinez didn’t return to the lot to get her own
car, the friend called the King County Sheriff’s Office to report Martinez
missing.
The morning of
September 1, Seattle city police found Martinez’s body in an alley next to a
fire station, with five gunshot wounds and “burns consistent with being shot at
close range,” according to the Times. She had no
identification on her, but communications between the city and county officers,
with the help of security footage that showed the parking lot meeting,
identified her as Martinez. The footage showed flashes of light that appeared
to be a handgun firing.
Hardy remained
at large for more than a month, but with information from his Facebook profile,
which Martinez had sent to her friend before the meeting, helped authorities
track him down. Officers from the U.S. Marshals Service arrested him October 6
at an apartment building in Renton, a Seattle suburb.
He is charged
with second-degree murder and first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm.
Police have impounded his vehicle, which contained “five .40-caliber shell
casings, a fired bullet, and blood on the front passenger seat and on the
exterior of the front passenger door,” the Times notes. He
remains jailed and is due to be arraigned and enter a plea Thursday.
Martinez, who
was known by the nicknames Zo Zo or Zoey, was only recently identified as
trans. “While no news reports revealed that she was a trans woman, we have been
given permission by her family to reveal this,” Diversity Alliance of the Puget Sound posted on
Facebook. “They proudly stood by their daughter through her transition and will
continue to do so.”
“The news of
trans homicide is routinely delayed, which underscores the heartbreaking
reality that there will always be more victims than we know,” the Transgender Law Center noted on its Facebook page. She
is at least the 41st trans, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming person to die by
violence in the U.S. this year, most of them Black or Latinx; many more likely
go unreported due to misgendering and deadnaming.
“Zoey’s social
media feeds are filled with joy, curiosity, and generosity,” Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents reports. “Her
birthday this past spring was tied to a fundraiser. She repeatedly encouraged
her mother in her struggle with COVID-19. Her death is felt so deeply by her
family and friends, it is just heartbreaking. They loved her so much. It was
her family that released information that she was a young trans woman.”
SOURCE: ADVOCATE
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