“Everything points to this being a hate crime, and that’s how it will be treated,” Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Váquez said on Tuesday in reference to the death of Neulisa “Alexa” Luciano Ruiz, a transgender woman shot and killed in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, as reported by NBC News. The outlet reports that a video posted on social media “appears to show Ruiz’s killing” but it has not been viewed by Daily Kos. Police are reportedly investigating the video and its possible connections.
Details on this disturbing case are still developing. In a statement, Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the Transgender Justice Initiative for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), said the organization “heard that Ruiz was experiencing homelessness, further highlighting the ways a toxic mix of transphobia and misogyny conspire to put the transgender community at risk of extreme violence.”
Pedro Julio Serrano, an LGBTQ activist in Puerto Rico, told The Washington Blade, “We don’t know all the details yet, but she was harassed, hunted and brutally killed.”
The Associated Press reports that police say they initially responded to a complaint from a woman because Ruiz allegedly used the women’s bathroom in a fast food restaurant, identified by NBC as a McDonald’s. That was on Sunday. She was shot and killed early on Monday. According to CBS journalist and correspondent David Begnaud, who posted a Facebook video on the subject, “transphobic and inaccurate" social media posts spread an accusation that Ruiz had been in the women’s bathroom using a mirror to peer into bathroom stalls (which is, for the record, one of the conservative talking points often used when it comes to anti-trans bathroom bills). There were no charges filed against Ruiz. Begnaud says these posts have now been deleted.
“A transgender woman in Puerto Rico was mocked, harassed and then murdered for the simple act of using the women’s bathroom,” senior attorney and health care strategist at Lambda Legal, Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, said in a statement.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted using the hashtag #SeLlamabaAlexa (Her Name Was Alexa), joining others in raising awareness of her death and the greater violence transgender people, and especially transgender women of color, face every day.
Warren once went viral for reading the names of the 18 black transgender women killed in 2019 during a forum on LGBTQ rights. Awareness is excellent, but in the big picture, transgender people need—and deserve—legal protections at every single level.
In 2019, the HRC, which tracks rates of violence against the LGBTQ community, reported 26 instances of transgender or gender non-conforming people dying because of violence. As always, these numbers come with a grain of salt: Given how many people aren’t able to be fully out, and how many people are out but are deadnamed and hidden after their deaths, it’s difficult for organizations to get a fully accurate picture of these tragedies.
As Daily Kos previously covered, a journalist in New York recently went viral sharing a video alleging she had been attacked because she is transgender. In 2019, a black transgender woman was found in a car, “burned beyond recognition,” according to the local sheriff's office. Anti-trans bills, including bathroom and locker room bills, are popping up around the country as well. In the midst of all of this violence, here are five simple ways you can support your transgender loved ones.