It just is not ending.
Kandis Capri was 35. Her mother acknowledges that Kandis was transgender, but uses male pronouns and identifiers and her birth name anyway. Therefore, out of respect for Kandis I shall do some editing of her mother's account.
The only thing I know for sure is that she was murdered. Kandis was shot and I don’t know all the circumstances.
Kandis was at a lady’s apartment who she had been staying with for a couple weeks. And the only thing I know is that the car she had rented had been towed or something, or suspected of being towed away, so she left the apartment and was shot.
--Andria Gaines
One source has stated that Kandis was attempting to intervene in a domestic dispute.
Gaines said she was scheduled to receive an autopsy report later this week, and she had already been briefed on some of its findings.
The detective advised me that they have completed the autopsy report and that it was determined that she had been shot three to four times. And I did ask her: in the front [or] the back? And she said both.Kandis was the third trans woman murdered in the past week. Some sources count five, but they include two trans people of color who were killed earlier and just now being added to the list.
And she was shot multiple times from multiple directions? Dear God, that’s an execution. These blog posts are becoming a horrible pattern reflecting a terrible epidemic in our society.
--Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents
A
vigil is scheduled for Wednesday in downtown Phoenix.
Yesterday, August 14, 2015 will go down in the history of our US trans community and our trans rights movement as a very tough day for us. We had announcements of two more trans younglings in Detroit murdered in Amber Monroe and Ashton O’Hara. We had in North Carolina the announcement that the remains of Elisha Walker had been found after she disappeared 10 months ago. And we are also trying to confirm the death of Kandis Capri in Phoenix.
The ray of sunshine in those dark clouds of despair is that in two of the cases. the perpetrators are sitting in jail awaiting further action from law enforcement.
We are in a human rights war we didn’t start, but have no choice but to fight it and win. At stake is our humanity and our human rights, and like all wars, unfortunately there are causalities.
Kandis Capri makes number 15 in a year that is rapidly becoming a deadly one for US based trans women, and we still have 4 months to go. Far too many of those deaths have been overwhelmingly of Black and Latina trans women, and far too many of them this year have been under 30.
If #BlackTransLivesMatter Black America, prove it to me and your trans kin.
We have talents as trans people we can contribute to the greater African-American community and society. But we can't do that if we're lying dead in a grave.
--Monica Roberts, TransGriot
A White House We The People petition created by Fran Watson of Houston is calling for the federal government to do a formal investigation into the unacceptable levels of murders of trans POC people. It needs 100K signatures by September 10 to get a formal White House response and to date as of the time I wrote this post it has only 818 signatures.
Unacceptable when we are looking at a crisis in our community. Trans women of color are being killed and nobody seems to care about doing something to solve the problem,
If you really care about Black trans people and aren't paying lip service to it, I ask that you not only sign this petition on behalf of the people no longer here, but pass it around your influence circle and urge them to sign it too.
--Roberts
Shade Schuler. Papi Edwards. Lamia Beard. Ty Underwood. Yasmine Payne. Taja Gabrielle de Jesus. Penny Proud. Kristina Gomez Reinwald. London Chanel. Mercedes Williamson. India Clarke. K.C. Haggard. Amber Monroe. Kandis Capri.
These are the names of the trans women reported murdered since the beginning of the year. So many more go unreported. I call on all of us to say their names. Each one of these women should still be alive--but they are not because the lives of trans women are seen as disposable.
The average life expectancy of a trans woman of color is 35 years old. And yet even still, no state of emergency has been declared. Black communities are in crisis, and we declare that more than 13 murders of trans women, 5 of whom were murdered just this week, 11 of whom are of color and most of whom are Black, is indeed, a state of emergency.
--Alicia Garcia, #BlackLivesMatter