Philadelphia Police Investigating Murder of Black Trans Woman

Philadelphia police are searching for a group of men who attacked and fatally shot 22-year-old Keisha Jenkins, a trans woman.

According to investigators, surveillance video shows a car dropping Jenkins off on a street during the early morning hours on Tuesday. Soon after exiting the car, she was approached by a group of five to six men, who beat her before shooting her twice in the back. She was taken to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

“We don’t know if it’s potentially a hate crime or a robbery,” Philadelphia homicide captain James Clark said at a conference. “We really don’t know. It’s too early in the investigation.”

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It is unclear who was driving the vehicle that Jenkins was in and why she was dropped off so far from her North Philadelphia home.

Twenty-one trans people, including Jenkins have been murdered since January of this year—nearly double the number who were murdered in all of 2013—19 of whom are women of color. Jenkins is the second trans woman who has been killed in the city of Philadelphia this year.

“This type of wicked, inhumane violence just has no place here,” Philadelphia’s gay outreach director said to Philly.com. “We can’t take anymore. It’s just too much.”