Below is the text of the LA Times ARTICLE Dec. 27 on the latest transgender hate crime death.

note [after the "****"] the quote from the LAPD bemoaning the loss of the criminal hate assailant's life [unclear if self-inflicted or by the cops] after the chase. No words of sympathy for the "unnamend" transgender" woman, who was named in a separate e-mail as "Feliciano Moreno" probably her male birth name, not the one she used. As of December 30, no one in our community knew who the victim, reported to be 25 years old, is.

Note also the LAPD apparently concluded that the victim was a prostitute. How was this determined since she was dead?

This makes five Transgender deaths in Los Angeles, that I know of this year, two by apparent hate crimes.

Happy New Year ! Maybe the grim reaper will leave us alone in 2005, but don't bet on it.

Carolina
******

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December 27, 2004



LOS ANGELES
Marine Suspected in Slaying Is Fatally Shot After Pursuit


By Andrew Blankstein, Times Staff Writer


A 29-year-old Marine was fatally shot early Sunday after police said he killed a transgender prostitute in Hollywood, led officers on a high-speed chase and then pointed a gun at them in a parking lot near the LAPD Northeast Division station in Atwater Village.

Police did not identify the Marine, who was from Reseda and was a military policeman at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms. Investigators said it was not clear whether he was killed by officers or himself.
[************* ]
"It's a sad situation," said Los Angeles Police Department Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell. "Here's a guy who had his life ahead of him and in a very short period of time threw it all away."

The Marine had apparently picked up the unidentified prostitute, whom he believed was a female, in Hollywood, police sources said.

After an apparent dispute, he allegedly shot the victim in the head and dumped the body in a cul-de-sac off of Melrose Avenue. Police pursued him on surface streets and the freeway through Hollywood after a witness described his vehicle.

During the chase the Marine called his mother and sister and said he had shot a man who had tried to rob and carjack him, police said. The chase ended at a parking lot several blocks from the police station at San Fernando Road and Fletcher Drive.

LAPD spokeswoman Sara Faden said police first shot beanbag rounds at the Marine and then fired bullets at him after he pointed a handgun at them.