TDoR list ref: tgeu/18-May-2019/Muhlaysia Booker Muhlaysia Booker [photo: www.bet.com]
Muhlaysia was found dead in the street by police in East Dallas at around 6:40 a.m. A month earlier she had been brutally attacked outside apartments in south Dallas.
When a transgender woman was attacked in a Dallas parking lot in April, cellphone camera footage of the episode made national headlines, and the police investigated it as a possible hate crime.
A month later, on Sunday, the Dallas Police Department announced that the woman, Muhlaysia Booker, 23, had been shot and killed. The police said it had no evidence linking the killing to the earlier attack.
Police responded to the shooting call in the 7200 block of Valley Glen Drive at around 6:40 a.m near the Tenison Park Golf Course. She was found dead from a gunshot wound.
At a news conference, Maj. Vincent Weddington said that officers found Ms. Booker shortly before 7 a.m. on Saturday, and that her identity was confirmed on Sunday. They had been responding to a report of a shooting and found Ms. Booker “lying facedown in the street, deceased from homicidal violence,” he said.
Major Weddington added that Edward Thomas, the man who was arrested after he was filmed repeatedly punching Ms. Booker last month, was no longer in police custody, but that there was no indication he was linked to the killing.
At a news conference after she was attacked last month, Ms. Booker stood on a podium and faced a group of supporters, several of whom carried signs in support of transgender people.
“This has been a rough week for myself, the transgender community and also the city of Dallas,” Ms. Booker said.
“This time, I can stand before you,” she added. “Whereas in other scenarios, we are at a memorial.”
In June 2019 Kendrell Lavar Lyles, 34, was arrested and charged with three counts of murder.
Lyles is also the person of interest in the death of Chynal Lindsey, 26, whose body was found in White Rock Lake on June 1.
Police said in May that the 22-year-old murder of Booker had similarities to two other attacks on transgender women, a murder in October and a stabbing in April, of which the victim survived.
In October, Brittany White, 29, was found dead from gunshot wounds in a vehicle parked southeast of Dallas. In April, a transgender woman was stabbed several times and left for dead in South Dallas. The woman survived and gave information on hers attacker.
Police said they were looking for links to another case in which remains of a transgender woman were found in Oak Cliff in 2017. The Dallas coroner had classified the death of Armani Dante Morgan, 27, as unexplained.
In November 2023 Kendrell Lyles, 37, was sentenced to 48 years in prison for her murder.
