‘DEMANDING JUSTICE’

Black Transgender Woman Shot and Killed in Dallas

Merci Mack's death marks the seventeenth killing of a transgender person in 2020.

A 22-year-old Black transgender woman was shot and killed in Dallas on Tuesday, marking the seventeenth trans person to be killed in the U.S. in 2020. Merci Mack was reportedly found by a passerby in a parking lot shortly after 6 a.m. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Police reportedly used Mack’s birth name rather than her preferred name to refer to her in police reports. Four transgender people have been killed in Dallas since May 2018, all of whom have been trans women of color. Transgender advocates in the region have noticed patterns to the killings of trans women, and have asked Dallas police to form a task force to focus on these patterns. “We just really are demanding justice and a better protocol of how to handle these murders and these communities,” transgender advocate Carter Brown was quoted as saying by NBC News. “At this point we are looking at an epidemic, and we don’t feel that there’s urgency to protect these transgender citizens of Dallas.”