Family members of a transgender woman found shot to death Monday outside a College Park apartment have heard the preliminary findings from police.
While investigators have not uncovered anything that suggests gender played a role in the deadly shooting, relatives of Troy “Tee Tee” Dangerfield are not ready to rule it out.
They have seen the stats.
According to the nation's largest lesbian, gay, transgender and queer civil rights organization, at least 22 transgender people were killed in the United States in 2016, the most recorded by Human Rights Campaign.
Dangerfield’s name has already been added to the 2017 edition of that list. She is No. 16.
"All lives matter,” the woman’s aunt, Alesa Dangerfield, told Channel 2 Action News. “No one has the right to take someone’s life.”
Dangerfield’s death came just weeks after another transgender person was killed in Georgia.
Ava Le’Ray Barrin, 17, was shot during a June 25 fight in the parking lot of an Athens apartment complex. Jalen Breon Brown was charged with murder in connection with Barrin’s death.
Now, family members want justice for Dangerfield, who was shot multiple times about 4:20 a.m. Monday as she sat in her car outside the South Hampton Estates in the 3100 block of Godby Road. She was 32 years old.
“My best friend is gone," her mother, Yolander Dangerfield, told Channel 2. “(She’s) not coming back."
Police have not made any arrests in Dangerfield’s death, which occurred less than 48 hours after she attended a march for transgender rights in Midtown.
And investigators have no idea why someone sprayed her car with bullets.
Family members said they are just as puzzled.
“She was just an all-around beautiful person,” cousin Ramona Dangerfield told Channel 2. “She was an amazing soul.”
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