A Black transgender woman was found dead in an alley on Sunday, shot five times and covered in a blanket just a block from her home in West Baltimore.
Tai’Vion Lathan, 24, was described by family and friends as outgoing and someone who lived her life unapologetically.
Related:
Lathan’s body was discovered at around 10 a.m. on Sunday, according to Desire Bandz with the trans outreach nonprofit Maryland Safe Haven. The manner of death revealed “the inhumanity that the person who killed her has,” Bandz said.
Stay connected to your community
Connect with the issues and events that impact your community at home and beyond by subscribing to our newsletter.
“She was very loving. She loved everybody. She was very funny,” Koryne Davis, a close friend of Lathan, told NBC affiliate WBAL. “She didn’t deserve that. She didn’t deserve to not be here.”
In an interview with WJZ in Baltimore, Lathan’s aunt, Carla Stokes, described her niece as “just who she was: a very outgoing person, a sweetheart.”
Lathan’s death was “an injustice for her and all of us,” said Maryland Safe Haven’s executive director, Iya Dammons.
“Her story is our story so we want to make sure that her story is being told,” Dammons added, “in that law enforcement is doing the correct things to make sure that her murder is solved.”
Police provided few details of the killing, but Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott vowed authorities will “track those people down and do their due diligence.”
Of Lathan’s murder, the mayor said, “This is what you hear me talking about when you talk about that culture of violence. We have to think about that in its completeness, for everybody in the city of Baltimore—including members of the transgender community.”
A vigil is planned for Lathan on Friday. Mourners have been asked to bring pink balloons and pictures of the victim.
Lathan is one of at least 13 Black trans women who have died by violence in the U.S. this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Her death is among 28 similar killings in Baltimore over the past five years, as reported by the Maryland Trans Survey.
“I can’t take no more. I’m tired of losing my people. I’m tired of having to be scared to be myself,” Lathan’s friend Koryne Davis said. “I’m tired of having to walk on eggshells because I am who I am.”
