Friends and loved ones of Yazmin Vash Payne, who was fatally stabbed in her Van Nuys apartment on Jan. 31, 2015, attend a vigil on Feb. 1, 2015, outside her apartment. In December 2016, Vash Payne’s boyfriend was sentenced to more than 10 years in state prison for her murder and setting their apartment on fire. Photo: Facebook.
LONG BEACH — Almost all Los Angeles County hate crimes in 2017 against transgender people were violent, a slight increase from last year, according to Los Angeles County data.
Violence against the transgender community will be discussed in Long Beach at Tuesday’s Transgender Day of Remembrance Vigil at Harvey Milk Promenade Park.
It will start at 6:30 p.m. and feature speakers sharing their experiences in Long Beach and information about available services in Long Beach.
The evening also will include a reading of transgender people who were murdered in 2017.
In January, Kevyn Ramirez, 29, was charged with murder of a Pico-Union transgender woman, Viccky Gutierrez. Ramirez has pleaded not guilty.
Ramirez allegedly stabbed Gutierrez and set her residence, an apartment in the 1700 block of South New Hampshire Avenue in the Pico-Union area, on fire during the morning of Jan. 10, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
Bill would give transgender inmates in California jails civil rights protections
Last month, according to a memo obtained by the New York Times, the Trump Administration could erase federal protections for transgender people by redefining the term gender, and essentially cease to recognize that transgender people exist.
The first Transgender Day of Remembrance took place in 1999 to honor transgender murder victim Rita Hester, a 34-year-old African American woman was found killed inside her apartment in Allston, Massachusetts.
Hester’s case has yet to be solved.
Last week, during Transgender Awareness Week, the Long Beach City Council unanimously approved creating a policy that will recognize employee’ preferred names and pronouns.
