Black transgender woman, 23, found burned to death in Florida, friends suspect hate crime
A black transgender woman’s body was found in a torched car on September 4, in Clewiston, Florida. The body, which was burnt beyond recognition, took the investigators several days to identify it as belonging to Bee Love Slater based on the dental records.
Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization that tracks anti-gender violence, estimated 23-year-old Love Slater as the 18th known transgender woman of color to be killed in the US this year. The case is currently being investigated as a homicide. Hendry County Sheriff Steve Whidden shared in an interview that the case was being treated as a homicide, and since they haven’t recovered any evidence suggesting that it was hate-crime, they are not treating it as such now.
He said, “We don’t have anything that would show that it’s a hate crime right now. We possibly have a motive, but I can’t say what that is at this time,” as reported by the New York Times.
Slater’s friend Antorris Williams however told OUT magazine that she had been receiving several threatening messages on Facebook days before her murder. He went on to add, “(Slater) posted messages saying she felt as if people were after her to attack and hurt her and she had a conversation with one of her best friends the day she was murdered saying she wanted to leave the area”. Slater’s friends are convinced that she was killed because of her orientation.
In 2018, 26 transgender people were reported to have been killed, most of who were trans women of color. In 2017, 29 such deaths were recorded. Many such murders have been markedly brutal. Earlier this year, three transgender women were brutally murdered in Dallas, raising concerns of safety amongst the members of trans community, especially trans women of color.
The American Medical Association alarmed by this rising trend labeled violence against transgender people as an epidemic, and at a conference, they voted to adopt new policies to help prevent the spread of the epidemic.