By Dan Avery - NBC News
Puerto Rico police are investigating the death of a transgender man found with multiple gunshot wounds on January 9.
A woman was driving down an unlit stretch of highway in Trujillo Alto, a municipality about 15 miles (24 kilometers) southeast of San Juan, when she hit something, according to local news website WAPA.
When he got out of the car, he realized that it was a corpse and notified the authorities, who identified the victim as Samuel Edmund Damián Valentín.
Police initially mistook Damián for a woman
, whose home is in Juncos, less than 15 miles from Trujillo Alto, according to her Facebook profile.
[Chronology of the murder of a transgender woman in Puerto Rico: what is known about the Alexa case]
Lieutenant José Padín, director of homicides for the criminal investigation unit in neighboring Carolina, told the San Juan Daily Star that Damián "had no identifications and there were no relatives who could identify him beforehand."
His mother and stepfather were finally able to identify his body, but they used his birth name, according to The Star. “His mother told me that he would always prefer others to call him Samuel, Sam or Sammy when he was on the street,” explained Padín, which confirmed that the reasons for his death have not been clarified and there are no suspects.
Samuel Edmund Damián Valentín.NBC News via Facebook
Damián is the seventh known transgender person to die of violence in Puerto Rico since last February, according to the Transgender Law Center.
Pedro Julio Serrano, founder of the LGBTQ advocacy group Puerto Rico Para Todos, said police are not doing enough to address
"the wave of homophobic and transphobic violence that is haunting them like never before
.
"
[Trump removes the rule that protected transgender patients from being discriminated against by health services]
"The police violate their protocols and ignore, make invisible and minimize the serious problem," he
wrote on Monday on his website asking the authorities to "investigate the angle of hatred in the murder" of Damien.
Puerto Rico's hate crime law includes both sexual orientation and gender identity, but according to Metro Weekly,
local prosecutors rarely enforce them
.
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After the charred remains of two trans women were found inside a burned-out car in Humacao last spring, the FBI stepped in to join the investigation.
In April, the suspects, Juan Carlos Pagán Bonilla, 21, and Sean Díaz de León, 19, became the
first people in Puerto Rico to face federal hate crime charges
.
The victims, Layla Peláez, 21, and Serena Angelique Velázquez, 32, were found just days after another transgender woman, Penélope Díaz Ramírez, 31, was beaten and hanged in a men's prison in Bayamón.
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In February, Neulisa Luciano Ruiz, also known as Alexa, was shot and killed in Toa Alta a day after being reported to the police for using the women's bathroom at a restaurant belonging to the McDonald's hamburger chain.
Ruiz's attackers reportedly posted a video of the shooting on social media.
The following month, Yampi Méndez Arocho, a 19-year-old transgender man, died in Moca after being shot twice in the face and two in the back.
Mendez had reportedly been assaulted by a woman a few hours before the shooting.
The body of nursing student Michelle Michellyn Ramos Vargas was found in late September near a farm in San Germán, in the southwest.
Vargas had been shot several times in the head and left on an isolated road.
In 2020, at least 44 transgender and gender non-conforming people were killed in the United States
, according to the Human Rights Campaign, making it the deadliest year since the organization began tracking such deaths in 2013.
Damien already He is the second known trans person to die from violence this year, following the death of 28-year-old Tyianna Alexander, who was shot and killed in Chicago on January 6.
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The Transgender Law Center mourned Damian's death in a tweet Wednesday, writing:
“We are appalled at what he experienced in his last moments.
Trans men deserve dignity and the opportunity to prosper, "they
reported.
In the early morning hours of New Year's Day, Damien posted on Facebook his excitement for the "new year to come."
"[I am] grateful for all the experiences that taught me how strong we really are," he wrote.
"To life, to good and evil, and to all the justice that has to arise," he wrote.
With information from the San Juan Daily Star, Metro Weekly and Wapa.tv.
