Police in Houston are searching for a man who chased down and repeatedly shot a black transgender woman on the morning of January 24.
The woman, identified only as “Pinky,” was frantically running through a Chevron gas station in the Westchase neighborhood of Houston on January 24 in a desperate effort to escape a man who wound up firing two shots at her before cornering her and shooting her three more times at point-blank range, according to Monica Roberts, who is a Houston-based trans rights advocate who wrote about Pinky on the blog TransGriot.
Video footage published by ABC 13 shows that there were several bystanders present at the time of the shooting.
The suspect, whose identity remains unknown, subsequently fled in what is described as a light colored SUV. It was not clear what motivated the man to carry out the brutal attack.
Pinky survived the shooting, but there are no updates on her condition. Roberts, who said she would be visiting Pinky in the aftermath of the shooting, could not immediately be reached for comment.
The suspect was wearing gray sweatpants and a gray hoodie with white sneakers. In response to two inquiries from Gay City News about the case, a spokesperson with the Houston Police Department vowed to reach out to investigators to check for any updates.
Following this story’s publication, Houston police still had not heard from investigators, but confirmed that the department’s initial report listed Pinky as a male and that authorities are trying to get in touch with her to confirm her gender identity. The Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT) already pointed out that Pinky was misgendered, which is “a story that plays out far too often in our community.” “Due to the complicated process and financial barriers that our community face when changing our identification to match who we truly are, many of us do not have the means or access to be able to have a state-issued license or ID that identifies us correctly as who we are,” TENT said.
In a Twitter post on the day of the shooting, the Human Rights Campaign said it was “horrified to hear of the shooting of Pinky” and that the “suspect must be brought to justice and held accountable for this horrifying act of violence.”
Transgender black women continue to be targeted at higher rates than other demographics amidst overall disturbing trends in violence against the community. HRC noted that at least 29 transgender people died in the United States last year due to fatal violence, the overwhelming majority of those whom were black women.
