[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
Yet another transgender person has been brutally murdered.
According to authorities, Jahaira DeAlto (pictured above), a trans activist who worked with a domestic abuse program, was hosting a man and his family in a Boston home on Sunday when the man allegedly stabbed her and his wife to death in front of two children who also resided with DeAlto in the city’s Dorchester neighborhood.
The suspect, Marcus Chavis, was ordered to be held Monday without bail. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office confirmed the slayings, but did not release a motive for the killings of the 42-year-old activist or the 35-year-old’s wife, Fatima Yasin.
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The state attorney’s office noted that Chavis called 911 shortly before 12:30 p.m. on Sunday to report that he’d allegedly stabbed his wife. Officers who arrived at the building where Chavis, Yasmin, and the children were residing found the bloodied body of Chavis at the front entrance.
The two women were found in separate bedrooms, reportedly both suffering from serious stab wounds to the neck, and later died. The two children were inside and were physically unharmed. Authorities also found a dog with a stab wound in the same bedroom as DeAlto; the dog was taken for treatment.
After the news broke, friends, family, and colleagues of DeAlto’s mourned her on social media. In a Facebook post by the Elizabeth Freeman Center, which offers counseling, emergency shelter, and advocacy for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, she was described “as a colleague, activist and survivor who touched the lives of everyone around her with her passion, drive, humanity, humor, and fierce vision.”
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The post also quoted DeAlto “in her own words” from a post she wrote for Mother’s Day last year, writing:
“I am the mother who raised the children whose rainbow sparkled too brightly and blinded their birth moms. I cherished what they discarded. I took on earthly assignments for moms who’d earned their Heavenly reward. For their babies who still needed raising. I did that. And I’m still doing that. And I’ll keep doing that. Because I will never know what seeing my DNA reflected in another’s eyes could look like, but I know what gratitude in the eyes of a young person who finally feels seen looks like. And for me, that’s enough.”
Out magazine called DeAlto “a legend” in the ballroom community — a gay and trans community of formerly underground dance competitions — noting that DeAlto was a member of Boston’s House of Balenciaga.
Chavis was arraigned on two counts of murder and one count of animal cruelty. This marks the 19th transgender or gender non-conforming person to have been killed so far in 2021, according to the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Human Rights Campaign.
This senseless violence needs to stop.
[Image via NJ Performing Arts Center/YouTube]
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