TeeTee Dangerfield Is 16th Known Trans Woman Killed In U.S. This Year

Noah Michelson

TeeTee Dangerfield, a 32-year-old transgender woman, was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds Monday in College Park, Georgia.

She is the 16th known transgender person to be killed in the United States in 2017.

Police found Dangerfield inside of her car at the South Hampton Estates apartment early Sunday morning, according to WXIA. She was immediately taken by a team from the College Park Fire Rescue to Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

College Park Police Maj. Lance Patterson told Georgia Voice that there are currently no suspects in the shooting, and the police are unsure whether Dangerfield’s transgender identity was a motivating factor.

“At this time we don’t have anything that’s telling us that, but we’re not ruling out any possible motive,” Patterson said.

Monica Roberts of TransGriot.com wrote Monday that she was “sick of [her] trans sisters dying.”

“She is the 16th trans woman of color murdered in the United States this year, the 14th African American trans woman killed in 2017, and most infuriating to me, was under age 40,” Roberts wrote. The number of slain trans individuals may actually be higher, as violence experienced by trans people is regularly and grossly under- and misreported.

Transgender individuals face disproportionately high rates of violence and discrimination. According to The National Center for Transgender Equality’s 2015 Transgender Survey Report, “46 percent of respondents were verbally harassed and 9 percent were physically attacked because of being transgender.” The survey also found that 10 percent of respondents reported being sexually assaulted during the prior year, and 47 percent said they were sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime.

As GLAAD notes, 2016 was the deadliest year on record for transgender people in the United States with 27 killings, almost all of them trans women of color.

Dangerfield’s death comes just days after comedian Lil Duval told the hosts of “The Breakfast Club” morning show that he would “kill” a woman if he found out she was transgender after having sex with her. Despite outcries from the LGBTQ community and its allies, Duval has refused to apologize for his comments.

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Kim Coco Iwamoto

In 2006 Iwamoto was <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,229937,00.html#ixzz1eCixXAuI" target="_hplink">elected to a position on Hawaii's state Board of Education</a> and became (at the time) the highest-elected transgender official in the United States. She <a href="http://hawaii.gov/elections/results/2010/general/files/histatewide.pdf" target="_hplink">ran for re-election in 2010</a> and won. See a video of Iwamoto discussing her support of an anti-bullying bill in Hawaii by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgqswbrLsRM">clicking here.</a>

Laverne Cox

The transgender activist <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/26/lgbt-history-month-icon-laverne-cox_n_2011651.html">Laverne Cox</a> came to our attention when she first appeared on VH1's "I Want to Work for Diddy," which made her the first African-American transgender woman to be on a mainstream reality TV series. The show went on to win GLAAD's media award for outstanding reality program in 2009 where Cox accepted the honor and spoke about transgender visibility (VIDEO). Since appearing on Diddy's show, Cox got her own VH1 reality series, "TRANSform Me," which got its own GLAAD media award nomination in 2011. She then exploded within the entertainment industry after becoming a breakout star in the Netflix original series "Orange Is The New Black." The pioneer continues her advocacy in public engagements and frequently writes about trans issues for <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laverne-cox/"><em>The Huffington Post</em></a>.

Louis Gradon Sullivan (1955 - 1991)

In 1976 <a href="http://www.lousullivansociety.org/about-lou-sullivan.html" target="_hplink">Lou G. Sullivan began applying for</a> gender confirmation surgery, but was rejected because he identified as gay. At the time, "female-to-gay male transsexuality was not recognized by the medical/psychotherapeutic establishment as a legitimate form of gender dysphoria at that time." After mounting a successful campaign to get homosexuality removed from a list of objections which served to keep interested candidates from undergoing surgery, Sullivan finally obtained gender confirmation surgery in 1986. That same year <a href="http://www.lousullivansociety.org/about-lou-sullivan.html" target="_hplink">he organized FTM</a>, "the first peer-support group devoted entirely to female-to-male [transsexual and transvestite] individuals."

Michael Dillon (1915 - 1962)

Dillon was the first person known to have transitioned both hormonally and surgically from female to male. A British writer, physician, philosopher, and Buddhist, Dillon penned several books including, <em>Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology</em> (1946), <em>Growing Up into Buddhism</em> (1960), <em>The Life of Milarepa</em> (1962), <em>Imji Getsul</em> (1962), and numerous articles. He was in love with another famous transgender person, Roberta Cowell, but she did not share his feelings. He died in India -- where he had moved to study, meditate, and wrote under the name Lobzang Jivaka -- just days after sending his memoir, "Out Of The Ordinary," to his literary agent.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.