MINNEAPOLIS (KFGO/WCCO) – A Minneapolis man has been sentenced for the murder of a transgender woman in Minneapolis last fall.
Damarean Bible, 25, was found guilty of intentional second-degree murder for shooting and killing Savannah Williams, 38, and has now been sentenced to 30.5 years.
Savannah’s sister Gabrielle says she wants people to remember her sister as someone who mattered in community.
“She was here. She was a daughter. She was a sister. Her nieces and nephews adored her,” Gabrielle said at a downtown Minneapolis press conference. “She loved him so much. He took that away from us.”
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty says she and her team were unable to prosecute the case as a bias crime, but said that she hopes Savannah’s family finds solace in Bible receiving a maximum sentence.
Minnesota doesn’t have a specific hate crime offense on the books, but it allows for longer sentences in crimes motivated by bias. Second-degree murder is punishable by up to 40 years in Minnesota.
Williams was found with a gunshot wound to the head in a south Minneapolis courtyard last fall.
According to the criminal complaint, Bible told police he walked past Williams at a bus shelter near a light-rail station about 5 a.m. on Nov. 29 and that she asked him if he wanted sex. Bible said he began to feel “suspicious” as she performed oral sex on him in a courtyard several blocks away, and that he shot her in the head from just inches away. The complaint says Bible later told his father from jail that he “just murdered someone.” He said he felt sorry for killing her and knew he wasn’t God, but he felt like he “had to do it,” the complaint says.
Members of the Queer Legislative Caucus ended up pushing for legislative action against the threat of transphobia after the shooting. The Aliveness Project says that Savannah’s death cannot be treated as an isolated incident.
“Savannah should be alive today. Because Savannah is a trans woman, she is dead,” Democratic Rep. Leigh Finke, of St. Paul, the state’s first openly transgender legislator, said. “Transphobia is rampant in America, and it is deadly.”
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