During opening statements, a U.S. assistant attorney portrayed Daqua Lameek Ritter as someone working vigilantly to avoid the ridicule he’d face if his secret relationship with the trans woman was exposed.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The first federal trial over a hate crime based on gender identity began Tuesday in South Carolina, where a man faces charges that he killed a Black transgender woman and then fled to New York.
The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that in August 2019, Daqua Lameek Ritter lured the woman — who is referred to as Dime Doe in court documents — into driving to a sparsely populated rural county in South Carolina. Ritter then shot her three times in the head with a .22 caliber handgun after they reached an isolated area near his uncle’s home, according to Ben Garner, an assistant U.S. attorney for the district of South Carolina.
In recent years there has been a surge in attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. For decades, transgender women of color have faced disproportionately high rates of violence and hate crimes, .
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