East KC hit-and-run victim identified as “Black Trans Icon” Kita Bee, community groups say

Friends and family have identified the woman killed in a hit-and-run Friday night in East Kansas City as 46-year-old Kita Bee.

Bee, a Black transgender woman, was well-known to a tight-knit community of trans women of color in Kansas City who have faced the deaths of too many friends in recent years.

“Kita was very BOLD in her personality,” Bee’s sister Raynisha shared online through KC Transformations. “Her idol was Mary J. Blige, and she was an all-around entertainer. She loved to sing, dance, perform to make you happy, smile, or laugh.”

While navigating periods of instability and housing insecurity, Bee served as an informal mentor to many trans women in similar situations, KC Transformations’ Community Advisory Board wrote on Instagram Saturday.

The nonprofit group, which advocates for safer communities for transgender communities of color, described Bee as a “Black Trans Icon” on social media.

“Kita Bee was among the first to start working on Troost Avenue and taught several of her fellow trans women how to stay safe and navigate survival and safety,” the group shared on Instagram. “This was an everyday reality for many of our sisters long before safer options for job employment, and housing were available for trans women of color.”

Bee was extremely close with Raynisha and with her mother, who passed away earlier this year, said Kris Wade, who had known Bee for 18 years.

Wade is the executive director of The Justice Project, a peer support nonprofit supporting women who have experienced homelessness and violence. After a particularly tough year, Bee was looking into getting an apartment when she was killed, Wade said.

“She had a very sweet soul,” Wade said. “I’ve got millions of memories of her… She was in her full authentic persona all the time, and that takes guts when you’re a trans person. Especially a trans woman of color.”

Bee had previously survived multiple major injuries, including another hit-and-run incident earlier this year, Wade said.

Police still have not reported locating the driver of the silver Chevrolet Silverado which reportedly hit Bee while traveling west on Independence Avenue, near the Independence Plaza neighborhood in East Kansas City. Police think a second car may have also hit the victim, according to Capt. Jacob Becchina, a spokesperson for the Kansas City Police Department.

The hit-and-run was the 39th fatal traffic incident in Kansas City in 2024, according to Becchina.

Some friends and family are calling for investigation into whether Bee’s death was caused by foul play, according to both Wade and KC Transformations.

KCPD has classified her death as a pedestrian fatality hit-and-run accident, according to Officer Alayna Gonzalez, a KCPD spokesperson. The department plans to reconstruct the accident as part of an ongoing investigation, Gonzalez said.

KCPD has not officially identified Bee as the deceased. The department misgendered Bee in initial communications from the scene, reporting her gender as male — something Wade has seen before, she said, though less so over time. Just over four months ago, Raytown police misgendered another Black transgender woman, Amber Minor, whose body was found laying in a driveway at 9800 block of 77th Terrace.

Officers later provided updated reports with Bee’s correct pronouns, Wade said.

‘An epidemic of queer murders’

Though proud, strong and savvy, Bee navigated an increasingly unsafe environment as a trans woman of color on the streets of Kansas City, Wade said. To her, the Kansas City area has become the site of “an epidemic of queer murders.”

“Horribly enough, I wasn’t surprised to hear that she had passed, because in my experience of the last twenty-something years, trans folk don’t live that long,” Wade said. “...These women — they put their lives at risk every time they walk out the door.”

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Many who knew Bee well are still mourning Minor, who died in that Christmas Eve shooting in Raytown.

Minor’s close friend Aerrion Burnett, another proud Black trans woman and Kansas City lifer, was found dead of a gunshot wound in 2020. A year earlier, Brianna Hill – who also spelled her name as Breonna Be’Be’ Hill – was also shot and killed in Kansas City.

According to data collected by the Human Rights Campaign, 84% of transgender individuals murdered in the United States in 2023 were people of color. Half were Black transgender women.

“Every time a trans person is killed, it just echoes through the whole community, literally worldwide,” Wade said. “It’s a huge trauma to the queer community.”

Bee’s body was moved to Macon-Harvey Funeral Care as her family and friends work on memorial arrangements. Bee hoped to be cremated and then scattered into the ocean, KC Transformations shared on behalf of Raynisha.