I first wrote about this story last October in October Trans News and Halloween Hash 2. In the first diary, I mentioned her murder and the way the police handled it. In the second, I revealed that two men had been arrested.
The wheels of justice grind slowly…exceedingly slowly sometimes. It may be even more slow in the nearby unfriendly confines of Essex County, NJ. But they do grind and eventually something has to happen.
Alrashim Chambers and Marquise Foster, the two men who had been arrested for the murder, will face court proceedings in July. Chambers was indicted for murder, bias intimidation, and two weapons offenses. Chambers will be arraigned July 12. Foster pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of hindering the apprehension of Chambers in May. Foster will be sentenced on July 22. Both men are still being held in the Essex County Correctional Facility on $1 million bail. Foster could get a maximum sentence of 5 years. Chambers could get life.
The murder happened 6 miles from where I live. Apparently she had gone dancing with a cousin at an Irvington club on 9/12/10, where they met the two men. An exchange of phone numbers occurred. The men later showed up at the cousin's apartment. It was there that Victoria Carmen White was shot and killed.
The 28 year old model and dancer was 9 years post-op at the time and had all her legal documents in her current name, yet she was still identified by the Prosecutor's Office as "James White", which was repeated in the media, in the way people have of demeaning us even after we are dead.
There was a retraction a week after the murder.
Monica White said she could not fathom how investigators could have made that oversight. If you looked at her, she said, you would tell yourself, “‘That’s a fine chick.’ You wouldn’t have a question in your mind.”
--Link
“Everything about her was female,” George Waters, a close friend of White’s since high school, said after her funeral last week. “She was essentially beautiful.”
She was happy -- much, much happier. whose three children visited with White after school nearly every day. You could see she was liberated. You could see she was who she wanted to be.
--Guy Antoine, a neighbor in South Orange, whose three children visited White after school nearly every day
There was a touching memorial to Victoria in the South Orange Patch.