Tragedy has struck for the family of Los Angeles Clippers player Reggie Bullock as reports surfaced that his transgender sister, Mia Henderson, 26, was found murdered in the streets of Baltimore.
According to the Baltimore Sun, Henderson’s body was found around 6 a.m. in an alley known as “a hot spot for prostitution” in northeast Baltimore. Police say Henderson, who was born Kevin Long, died of “severe trauma.”
A neighbor cried as she talked with police and explained that she saw Henderson walking down the alley with her killer around 5 a.m.
The neighbor, who declined to be named out of fear, says she was walking down the street to meet a friend when she “saw a light-skinned black man in a white T-shirt, white baseball cap and blue jeans, looking around nervously.” She says that the man approached her friend and offered $10 for a date, but her friend declined.
The woman says she “walked to a porch on Piedmont Avenue across from the alley’s entrance and watched a transgender woman in a skirt and shoulder-length black wig accompany the same man into the alley.”
This marks the second murder of a transgender woman in Baltimore in the last six weeks. The first was a victim named Kandy, whose body was found June 3 in a field in Northeast Baltimore.
Police have no suspects in either case and have yet to make an arrest, and many leaders of the LGBT community showed up to a meeting with a meeting with Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts about the murders.
“We want to be strong partners with our LGBT community,” he sad. “Not by talk, but by action.”
“It’s clear the community is concerned about the continued violence against transgender women, and we need to see action,” said Keith Thirion, director of advocacy and programs for Equality Maryland.
As for Bullock, who referred to Henderson as his “brother,” her death has left him and his family in grief and he shared his sadness on his Twitter page.
We send our condolences out to Bullock’s family and we hope that both Henderson’s and Kandy’s killer are brought to justice and that the senseless and hateful killings of transgender people ends. –nicholas robinson
