On Tuesday 11 August, at around 11.30pm, gunshots were heard outside an apartment complex in Phoenix. A transgender woman was killed and no one knows why.

According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), Kandis Capri, 35, was one of 16 transgender people to be murdered in the US this year.

“The only thing I know [for sure] is that my son was murdered,” Andria Gaines, Capri’s mother, told the Guardian. “[Kandis] was shot and I don’t know all the circumstances.”

Gaines continued: “[Capri] was at a lady’s apartment who he had been staying with for a couple weeks. And the only thing I know is that the car he had rented had been towed or something, or suspected of being towed away, so he left her apartment and was shot.”

Gaines said she was scheduled to receive an autopsy report , and she already had been briefed on some of its findings.

“The detective advised me that they have completed the autopsy report and that it was determined that he had been shot three to four times,” she said. “And I did ask her: in the front [or] the back? And she said both.”

Capri was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Her mother was notified at 5.30am the following day, by officials who knocked on her door. Gaines said she immediately began to wonder if her child’s identity had been a motivation for the murder.

“His phone was missing and his purse missing,” she said. “So for me, with his lifestyle, you don’t know if it was hate crime.”

As the investigation into Capri’s death was ongoing, Phoenix officials did not immediately release information to the public. Local news outlets did not immediately report the story. Phoenix police did not respond to multiple inquiries from the Guardian.



But as the family waited for answers and to plan a funeral, they continued to support the child they loved so dearly.

“He identified as transgender,” Gaines said. “Initially I was against it, but eventually I determined that was my child and I still loved him and I accepted him as he was.”

Earlier this year, the NCAVP released a report that said LGBT homicides rose by 11% in 2014. In 2015, with the recently reported deaths in Michigan, Texas and North Carolina of Amber Monroe, Shade Schuler and Elisha Walker – whose body was discovered on Friday – murders of transgender women have hit historic levels.

This week, a petition was launched asking the White House to open an investigation into such deaths. After the death of Kandis Capri, such pressure will only grow.