Twenty twenty-two is not looking good for the LGBT community after five transgender people were killed two months in.
Last year, there were 55 deaths according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Matthew Angelo Spampinato, Naomie Skinner, and Cypress Ramos were all killed in February. Amariey Lei and Duval Princess were killed in January.
Spampinato was a 21-year-old white trans man who died in a hit-and-run in New Castle, Delaware on Feb. 9. He was walking home after working at Starbucks when he was killed, according to Delaware News Journal. The police have not identified the driver yet.
Customers described him as “a breath of fresh air” and someone with “a smile that could turn a day around.”
“He was always so selfless,” colleague Samantha Strothmann told the News Journal. “He would always ask how everybody was doing even when he wasn’t having a good day himself.”
Spampinato grew up in Georgia and moved to Delaware last year. According to his social media posts, he knew he was trans since he was 13. He began hormone treatment in January of 2021.
“I’m glad I didn’t give up,” he wrote on Instagram.
Spampinato’s cousin, Morgan Hanners, said he deserves to be remembered as more than a victim.
“I want people to think of him as a human being who had a family [and] who had people that loved him,” she told the News Journal. “I would give anything just to be able to see him.”
Family members set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to reward anyone who can bring his killer to justice.
Skinner’s sister, Shycuria Harris, said she wanted to give her loved ones “a chance to celebrate her fabulous life” after Skinner was shot to death by her boyfriend Feb. 12 in Michigan, according to Detroit News. Harris set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for funeral expenses.
Prosecutors told the News that Skinner, a Black 25-year-old trans woman, and her boyfriend, Michael Cortez Norris, 26, had engaged in an argument that ended with the shooting.
Police eventually tracked Norris down and arrested him.
Ramos was a 21-year-old Latina trans woman who was loved by her local LGBT community in Texas, according to CrimeOnline. Her friends want justice after she was killed by an object and set on fire by 32-year-old Allan Montemayor on Feb. 13.
“He tried to burn my friend, literally. Like burn, burn them up,” Camilla Urbina told KCBD.
Montemayor claimed that Ramos was the one who set the fire and came at him with a bat, and it was “either me or [her],” but her friends aren’t buying his story.
“She is not that strong to even hit a person with a crowbar or a four-by-four or whatever it was that hit him when he was out of the restroom. There’s no way,” Urbina said.
Urbina is a drag performer and said Ramos was always supportive and well-known and loved in the gay community, KCBD reported. Ramos sent Urbina a video of her performance one time.
“Now that I have a video that she does have, that was from her hands, it just means so much more. I think, if anything, I could say like that was my number one fan.”
Urbina said she will miss Ramos’ smile, something she doesn’t want Montemayor to take from anyone else.
“I don’t want him to ever get out, ever. I don’t wish death on anybody. And I don’t wish death on him, but I don’t ever want him to get out and hurt anybody else.”
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