Four years after the tragic murder of a Black transgender woman in South Carolina, two men have finally been charged with hate crimes and obstruction offenses.
Pebbles LaDime “Dime” Doe was 24 at the time Daqua Ritter, 26, and Xavier Pinckney, 24, shot and killed her “because of her actual and perceived gender identity,” prosecutors say.
Following her death, Ritter allegedly deceived investigators about his whereabouts and Pinckney concealed cell phone records of him calling Doe that day she was murdered.
“The hate crime count against Ritter carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The counts charging Ritter and Pinckney with obstruction of justice carry a maximum penalty of 20 years of imprisonment. The count charging Pinckney with lying to federal investigators carries a maximum penalty of five years of imprisonment,” reads a statement from the US Attorney’s Office.
Doe was found dead in a car parked in a driveway, according to Human Rights Campaign. At the time, she was the 15th transgender person to be murdered in 2019.
Data from Everytown for Gun Safety shows that there was a 93% increase in the number of transgender people killed from 2017 to 2021. In 2021, 56 transgender people were killed. The data further reveals that guns were used in more than half of all cases, and Black transgender women make up 75% of all victims, even though Black people make up just 13% of those in the transgender community.
“Bias-motivated crimes are a real, frightening problem in the United States, and LGBTQ+ people continue to be targeted because of who they are,” the Everytown report reads. “It’s not only the LGBTQ+ community that is affected by hate-fueled violence. Bias-motivated crimes based on race, religion, nationality, disability, and gender remain at troublingly high levels, and LGBTQ+ people hold many of these identities as well.”
