SEATTLE - The murderer of a Cuban and Native transgender woman from Minnesota was sentenced this week. A judge in Hennepin County, Minnesota, has ruled that Damarean Kaylon Bible, 25, will spend nearly 31 years in prison for second-degree murder after fatally shooting Savannah Ryan Williams. Bible will serve two-thirds of his sentence behind bars and the remainder on supervised release.
According to reports from 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS, police responded to a call at the Minneapolis' Phillips West neighborhood last November and found Williams' corpse. Court documents say that investigators were able to identify Bible thanks to a surveillance video from the area.
After being arrested, a criminal complaint notes that Bible called his parents from jail and said he had "just murdered someone." He said that even though he was sorry, he "had to do it."
Police later found a 9 mm handgun and a rifle in his apartment, as well as the clothing he was seen wearing on surveillance videos at the time of the murder.
Court documents indicate that Bible initially claimed he was not involved, but later admitted to shooting Williams in the head because he felt "suspicious" about her. After a thorough investigation, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said her office could not prove beyond reasonable doubt that the crime was bias-motivated but added that hate still could have been a factor.
"The fact that we could not charge this as a bias crime does not change the impact that this crime has had on making our trans community feel less safe," Moriarty said, according to KARE, an NBC affiliate in Minneapolis. "Across the country and in our community, hateful acts of violence against transgender people are on the rise. Every time a trans person is attacked, the entire community feels less safe."
According to a 2021 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault.
The study also revealed that transgender women are more likely to be victims of a hate crime, as one in four transgender women who were victimized thought the incident was a hate crime, compared to less than one in ten for cisgender women.
LGBTQ rights group the Human Rights Campaign reports that at least 25 transgender and gender-expansive people have been killed so far this year. People of color and especially Black transgender women have been the most common victims, with 72% and 44% of the total, respectively.
Between 2013 and 2023, HRC identified 335 cases of trans and gender-nonconforming people who were violently killed. Out of those, 15% of the victims were Hispanic or Latino.
Minnesota state Rep. Leigh Finke, the first trans person elected to the state's Legislature, said the governing body's Queer Caucus would continue to "do everything in our power" to solve the crisis of violence against trans people.
"Savannah Ryan Williams was a beloved member of the trans and Two Spirit community, and she should be alive today," Finke said, according to KARE. "The data is clear that trans people, especially trans people of color, suffer violence at rates far greater than our cisgender neighbors," Finke added.
During a Sept. 11 hearing, Bible briefly addressed Williams' family. "I completely apologize," Bible said. "I feel like I do need to sit down and do some time," the Minnesota Public Radio reported.
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