A man has been arrested in connection to one of two separate killings of black trans women in South Carolina this summer.
Dominick Archield, 34, turned himself in to police on August 11 for his role in allegedly killing 29-year-old Denali Berries Stuckey, according to The Post and Courier, a local news outlet in Charleston. Archield has not yet been charged, according to news reports.
Stuckey was found dead with gunshot wounds on the side of a road at 2821 Carner Avenue in North Charleston on July 20. Multiple attempts to reach the North Charleston Police Department on August 13 for further details were unsuccessful.
Roughly two weeks after Stuckey’s death, another black trans woman, Pebbles LaDime Doe, was found dead on August 4 in a car parked in a driveway on Concord Church Road in the town of Allendale, which has a population of less than 3,500 people.
The town is located just minutes from the Georgia border and is roughly two hours by car from the site of Stuckey’s death in North Charleston.
Neither the local sheriff nor the state police could be reached for further details in that case. Doe’s mother could not be reached by phone on August 8 and she did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Doe’s case and others have drawn national attention in light of the growing death toll of transgender women of color across the nation. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a 2020 presidential candidate, tweeted on August 8 that her “heart aches for Pebbles LaDime Doe, Kiki Fantroy, and their loved ones. The murder of black trans women is a crisis that we must call out — and address head-on.”
Fantroy, a 21-year-old black transgender woman, was shot and killed in Miami on July 31 and police there have no announced any leads in her death.
