Day to Day

Man Sentenced to 25-40 Years for Murder of Transgender Detroit Teen

transfeminism:

A Detroit man has been sentenced to serve 25 to 40 years in prison for the brutal October killing and dismemberment of a transgender teen, reports the Detroit News. Qasim Raqib killed 19-year-old Shelley Hilliard and burned her torso in retaliation for a drug sting.

Qasim Raqib was sentenced by 3rd Circuit Judge Bruce Morrow after pleading guilty March 7 to second-degree murder charges in the death of [Shelley Hilliard]. Authorities said Raqib mutilated Hilliard’s body and set the 19-year-old on fire in the street on Detroit’s east side. The killing occurred days after Hilliard worked with police in an attempt to set Raqib up in a drug deal.

Hilliard’s charred body was discovered near a Detroit freeway on October 23. Hilliard’s mother said that a cab driver took her daughter to a home where three men apparently ambushed her. Hilliard tried to call the cab driver for help when the line went dead.

Bravo to the Detroit Police Department and Wayne County prosecutors for the speedy arrest and conviction in the case. In addition to being at the greatest risk of violence, the murders of Black trans women are often unsolved. Black transgender women face “extreme discrimination and poverty”, and are more than likely to suffer from violence, physical or sexual abuse, police brutality, HIV/AIDS and bullying, according to a first of its kind survey conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Black Justice Coalition.

In related news: Detroit police are searching for the killer(s) of 35-year-old Coko Williams. The Black trans woman was found Tuesday with bullet wounds and her throat slashed. Trans activists are outraged over the media coverage—and with FOX Detroit’s comparison of Williams’ body to trash on the street.

I’m not sure that the Detroit police deserve much applause in this case, since they basically set up the situation that motivated Raqib to target and murder Hilliard. Yet police so often ignore and dismiss the murders of trans women of color that we are expected to feel grateful when an arrest and conviction is actually achieved. Even when it is a case that is so blatantly obvious since the police themselves made the victim a target when they forced her to set up the very person who would murder her three days later. Where is that accountability for the Detroit Police Department’s role in Hilliard’s death?