Remembering Our Dead

TDoR 2020 / 2020 / February / 24 / Alexa Negrón Luciano (Neulisa Luciano Ruiz)

Alexa Negrón Luciano (Neulisa Luciano Ruiz)

Age 28

24 Feb 2020
Toa Baja, Puerto Rico (USA)
Shot

TDoR list ref: tgeu/2-Mar-2020/Alexa Negrón Luciano & tgeu/23-Feb-2020/Alexa Murder

Alexa was shot dead several hours after a post denouncing her for using a women's restroom in a McDonalds restaurant had circulated on social media.

Alexa Ruiz, a transgender woman driven to the streets was hunted down and killed 9 hours after social media posts appeared which accused her of peeping in bathroom stalls. The person who instigated her killing filed a false police report alleging that she had peeked in a fast-food bathroom stall and shared it on Facebook, He withdrew that complaint after police questioned him.

By that time the lies that led to her death had gone viral and Alexa Ruiz was running for her life. Multiple videos recorded at different times and places show a terrified woman being hunted unmercifully.

Those images do her a grave injustice and will not be shared here.

horas antes de lo sucedido, la atendimos en mi trabajo y lo único que pidió fue un poco de comida. le dimos unas donas que habíamos acabado de hacer y así mismo se fue en paz, difícil creer que vivamos en un mundo así... https://t.co/H0e2o1Iko6
— Rolo (@rolomena5) February 25, 2020

The [LGBT+] activist and spokesman for the Puerto Rico for Everyone group, Pedro Julio Serrano, said the Police Bureau was the first to victimize Alexa by treating her as a man dressed as a woman.

“She was a woman. She was called Alexa,” he said.

Who was Alexa?

According to information compiled by the CABE, Alexa was born in 1991 in the municipality of Carolinas, near San Juan, in a poor and dysfunctional family.

"Apparently, she was the type of trans person who is expelled from the family or who has suffered violence, including sexual, within the family," says Pagan.

After her murder, several people who met her told on social networks that they had seen her walk through several municipalities of Puerto Rico.

"She was a homeless person who had mental health conditions and wandered around different areas. Here it is necessary to explain that being transgender is not a mental health condition, although there are transgender people, as it seems to be this case, that given the violence they have suffered may suffer mental conditions".

On 6th August 2021 three suspects were arrested by the FBI:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested this morning three men identified as Jordany Laboy García, Christian Yamaurie Rivera Otero and Anthony Steven Lobos Ruiz, linked to the death of the transgender woman Alexa.

The subjects were indicted by a federal grand jury and appeared today at the initial hearing before a magistrate where they face three charges: conspiracy to commit hate crime, violation of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act and obstruction of justice.

In November 2023 Jordany Rafael Laboy García and Christian Yamaurie Rivera Otero were sentenced to just three years and three months in prison for the assault that preceded Alexa's death. Taking into the time spent on remand, this meant they would be released within a month of being sentenced.

Alexa Negrón Luciano (Neulisa Luciano Ruiz)

Trigger warning