He's also a "person of interest" in the June 1 murder of Chynal Lindsey, another Dallas trans woman.

A Dallas man has been charged with murdering three people, including transgender activist Muhlaysia Booker, The New York Times reports.

Late last month, Booker, a 23-year-old black transgender woman who rose to prominence after a video of her being brutally attacked went viral, was killed in a seemingly unrelated act of anti-transgender violence.

Muhlaysia Booker was viciously attacked on camera in April. Below is @DallasPD announcement of her murder. @wfaa pic.twitter.com/nNSLfTe3tl — David Goins (@dgoins) May 19, 2019

Now, police in Dallas have charged Kendrell Lavar Lyles, 33, with her murder, as well as the violent deaths of a woman slain on May 22 and a man killed on May 23 in a drug-related incident.

News of Lyles’ murder charges comes just weeks after members of Dallas’ trans and gender non-conforming community demanded answers for the unsolved murders of three local transgender women. As The Times reported, the Dallas Police Department had launched an investigation into the unusually high concentration of anti-transgender violence citywide. The epidemic isn’t limited to Dallas or even Texas: In 2018 alone, at least 25 trans Americans were murdered—and like Booker (pictured below), the majority of last year’s victims were transgender women of color.



Jessica Anderson, a childhood friend of Booker, told The Times that she had complicated feelings about Lyles’ arrest.

“It’s the strangest thing,” she said, “because I thought it was going to make me happy or give me a sense of relief and in some aspects it does. But at the same time, it’s just one of those things that he still gets to live and then she doesn’t. At the end of the day, I still don’t have any actual answer as to why; what was so necessary, what was so crucial that you had to take her life like that?”



Police are still investigating the murder of 26-year-old Chynal Lindsey (pictured above), another black transgender woman from Dallas who lost her life on June 1, 2019, the first day of Pride Month. According to Dallas Police, Lyle is also a “person of interest” in that investigation, although it is currently unclear if he played a role in her death.

At a June 4 meeting, members of Dallas County’s Commissioners Court had a moment of silence in memory of Booker and Lindsey before reading a city resolution to recognize Pride Month.

At today’s Dallas County commissioners court meeting, Commissioner Elba Garcia held a moment of silence for Muhlaysia Booker and Chynal Lindsey before reading a resolution recognizing LGBTQ Pride month pic.twitter.com/rKhU585tUC — Dana Branham (@danabranham) June 4, 2019