Chyna Carrillo, a 24-year-old latinx trans woman who also went by the name of Chyna Cardena, was murdered in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania on February 18. According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Carrillo, a nursing home worker who would have been celebrating her 25th birthday in March, was found by state police who were called to the scene of her being assaulted by a man. Police ordered the perpetrator to stop, and subsequently shot him when he did not cease.
The attacker died at the scene, and Carrillo succumbed to her injuries at St. Elizabeth Hospital where she too was pronounced dead. Police have not yet released the name of Carrillo’s attacker or provided details about the relationship between the two. Following her death, a close family member, Mayra Carrillo, said: “[Chyna was my] beautiful, magical mermaid. I always called her that. She’s my mermaid, and we miss her. We miss her terribly.”
Carrillo is the 7th known trans person to have been killed in the US this year. Her murder comes around two weeks after Alexus ‘Kimmy Icon’ Braxton, another trans woman of colour, was found dead in an apartment complex in Miami, Florida. Tori Cooper, HRC director of dommunity engagement for the Transgender Justice Initiative, said: “The rate of violence against the transgender community so far this year is devastating. Chyna was very young and did not deserve to have her life cut short.”
Cooper is fearful that 2021 will be even more deadly for trans Americans than last year: “Already in 2021, we’ve lost too many trans lives. If this alarming rate of fatal violence persists, we will either match or surpass last year’s total number of 44 deaths, which marked 2020 as the deadliest year on record for our community. We must speak up and speak out. Everyone must take action to end the violence against our community and we must do so together as one LGBTQ+ community.”
