Two South Carolina men have been slammed with criminal charges in connection to the shooting and killing of a trans woman in 2019. One man faces life in prison on hate crime and obstruction offenses and the other faces 20 years for giving a false statement, per CBS News.
Pebbles LaDime “Dime” Doe was the second trans woman senselessly killed in the state of South Carolina in August of 2019. According to the Human Rights Coalition, Doe was found dead with gunshot wounds in a parked car. There are still details about the incident that have not been disclosed and no one is explaining why given it’s a 4-year-old case.
Doe’s family and the Alliance for Full Acceptance were the ones who first identified her as the victim.
Read the 2020 report from The Post and Courier:
Little information on the circumstances surrounding Doe’s death was available as of Thursday, and Allendale County law enforcement agencies declined to release basic information about the case.
Repeated requests to the Allendale County Coroner’s Office for the victim’s name, age and cause and manner of death were denied. When asked to explain why the information was being withheld, a Coroner’s Office representative said, “All I can say is I’m not releasing anything.”
The Allendale County Sheriff’s Office declined to release an incident report on Wednesday despite SLED clearing the report for release. A sheriff’s representative could not be reached Thursday.
Daqua Ritter, 26, was charged with a hate crime after prosecutors found his motive was “because of her actual and perceived gender identity,” announced the Department of Justice. Xavier Pinckney, 24, was charged with obstruction offenses for lying to the authorities about seeing Ritter the morning after the killing and concealing his phone who used to communicate with Doe the day of.
Doe’s family and friends remembered her as having a “bright personality” and being “the best to be around.” We’ve lost so many loving human beings all because someone failed to see them as just that - a human being. Gun violence exacerbated that issue, making Black trans women even more vulnerable of losing their lives, per Everytown for Gun Safety.
“Black trans women live at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities, are too often treated as disposable and are experiencing epidemic levels of violence,” said Chase Glenn, AFFA executive director, via The Post and Courier.