In the Florida cities of Jacksonville and Orlando, just a two hour drive from each other, a spate of suspiciously similar killings has the LGBTQ+ community on edge — and waiting for action.

Since February, four Black trans women and one Black femme gay man have been killed. At least one news report has linked the victims to the same touring drag show circuit.

Jessie Sumlar, a 30-year-old hairstylist whose friends described him as a drag performer, was discovered dead at home in Jacksonville on July 19, with a gun left near the door. Just 12 hours prior, police found 27-year-old Sasha Garden outside an apartment complex in Orlando with blunt trauma wounds to her body.

The latest deaths came on the heels of three killings of Black trans women in Jacksonville over the last few months. On June 24, Cathalina Christina James, age 24, was found dead with gunshot wounds at a hotel. Antash’a English, 38, was found shot to death on June 1, her body discovered between two abandoned houses. Celine Walker, 36, had been found shot to death in a hotel room on February 4.

Gina Duncan, Director of Transgender Equality at Equality Florida, says a disturbing pattern is emerging that has trans people across the Southeastern state on edge.

“Your mind wanders — do we have a guy working his way down I-10, working his way across the South? There’s no telling,” says Duncan. “It has the community living in fear, until there’s some results in reference to these investigations.”

Equality Florida and the local trans community are holding a town hall meeting in Jacksonville on August 2, with the goal of engaging local law enforcement in a discussion about the ongoing investigations and the tendency to misgender trans murder victims in initial police reports.

The Orlando sheriff’s department released a lengthy apology on July 21 for misgendering Sasha Garden, after criticism hit the department.

“In the early stages of this homicide investigation, the OCSO released details regarding the legal name of the victim as required by state statute, along with other details that might assist detectives in solving this heinous crime. At that time the Orange County Sheriff's Office did not know the individual was transgender and had only one goal in mind, finding and apprehending a suspect,” the Orange County Sheriff’s Office statement read.

Duncan said the cities have been cooperative and law enforcement have been engaging with the local LGBTQ+ community. But on Monday, Equality Florida released a statement pressing for Gov. Rick Scott to acknowledge the murders — a Republican with close ties to the Trump administration who has failed to say anything at all about the string of deaths.

“During the horrific Pulse murders, Gov. Scott also refused to identify the community by name,” says Duncan. “He called them murders, but he never said the word ‘LGBT.’”

On June 11, Gov. Scott announced Pulse Remembrance Day, in honor of the 49 mostly Latino LGBTQ+ victims killed at a gay club in Orlando two years prior. But in a response, openly gay Florida state representative Carlos Guillermo Smith criticized Scott for failing to ever reach out directly to the LGBTQ+ community after the mass shooting, telling the Tampa Bay Times: “he treats us like we don't exist."

“That’s why we’re calling out the governor, asking him to bring in state resources and to say the word transgender which he’s never said publicly,” Duncan says. “It may seem like a small thing, but that lack of acknowledgement of the community is part of the problem.”

With so many killings closely spaced over a short period of time, advocates are refusing to stand silently by waiting for results. So far, no suspects have been found in any of the five similar deaths, with all of the victims being Black trans women apart from one Black femme drag queen.

“The lack of urgency by law enforcement perhaps speaks to the bias towards trans women of color,” says Duncan. “If the victims were middle-class white cisgender women, I wonder what the immediacy of law enforcement would be in that case.”