A Navy seaman in training in Pascagoula, Mississippi is appearing before a judge for his preliminary hearing. He allegedly stabbed a 25-year-old transgender woman named Dee Whigham to death. She had been stabbed 119 times.
The Sheriff’s Deputy Leo Allen said that most of the wounds were to her face. Her throat was slashed three times.
The surveillance video shows Whigham going into a Best Western hotel room with her attacker, 20-year-old Dwanya (DWAN-yuh) Hickerson, at 8:30 p.m. Hickerson left the room alone about 30 minutes later, and Whigham’s friends found her and called the police. When Hickerson left the room, he had his shirt around his neck.
The judge refused to dismiss the case, now it’s going to a grand jury. The investigators are still trying to identify the relationship between Hickerson and Whigham.
Investigators noticed that several things were missing from the room that Whigham and her friends were staying in. Her cellphone and a Coach purse with personal items were among the things gone.
Hickerson didn’t have any of these things on him when he was arrested. Police did find a 10-inch fixed blade Gerber knife on the beach nearby. Some of the items were burned.
He was arrested on Keesler Air Force Base two days later. He is being charged with capital murder. Investigators also found a bloody shirt in his barracks. The shirt has been sent to a crime lab for testing.
Unfortunately, this is not the only horrific transgender murder that has happened this week. A member of Chicago’s transgender community, TT, was found with her throat cut Sunday night. The police said she was male, but her friends wanted to clarify that she was a fully-transitioned transgender woman.
One of her friends, Gladys Carter, said:
“She loved everybody. She brightened up everybody’s day, everybody loved her. That’s why I don’t understand who could have killed her.”
This violence hurting the transgender community needs to stop.
Her local Rainbow Center held a vigil for Dee Whigham:
Featured image from YouTube video.
