35-year-old Black trans woman Rasheeda Williams was shot and killed in Atlanta on Tuesday, April 18, 2023. Rasheeda was a performance artist known as Koko Da Doll and Hollywood Koko
Police reports indicate a person was found dead near a shopping plaza in southwest Atlanta. They confirmed a person was found shot to death at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. SW and Hamilton E. Holmes NW around 10:45 PM. There has been no official identification by authorities, but friends and family have confirmed Rasheeda was the victim.
Earlier this year, Rasheeda was recently featured in the award-winning Sundance Film Festival documentary “Kokomo City.” The film portrayed the lives of four African American transgender sex workers between New York City and Atlanta. She was also a rapper, releasing her first single “ Trick” in 2020 followed by 2022’s “ Bulletproof.”
Rasheeda is the tenth trans or gender nonconforming person whose violent death has been reported in 2023. She is the sixth Black trans woman, the ninth trans woman, the eighth trans woman of color, the ninth trans person of color, and at age 35, the second oldest of the 2023 victims to date. As of today, a trans person has been killed in the US every 11 days. Reported is an important distinction as we know there are more who go unacknowledged.
Rasheeda is the fourth trans person murdered in Georgia since December 2022. Black trans woman Destin Howard, 23, was killed in Macon in December 2022, nonbinary Indigenous person Tortuguita was shot to death in January 2023 outside of Atlanta, and then Ashley Burton, 37, in early April. And now Rasheeda.
Atlanta Police recently commented on the brutal attacks on three trans women in 2023 — it appears the first victim survived. They did not name Rasheeda, but the details match. And they don’t acknowledge Tortuguita’s killing by law enforcement either. But as a cluster, we can see a total of five trans people of color violently attacked within a two hour radius of Atlanta, only one of whom survived. Police say that their deaths are unconnected to one another and not legal hate crimes.
What people often misunderstand is that the legal definition of a hate crime is different from how we use that term…
