Friends call for action after body of Black trans woman is found at traffic intersection in South Florida

Family and friends of a transgender woman whose body was discovered in South Florida over the weekend have set up a makeshift memorial to honor her memory and call for “an end to this epidemic of violence” against trans women of color.

Nedra Sequence Moss, 50, was found in a pool of blood at an intersection in Opa-locka, about 15 miles north of Downtown Miami, early Saturday morning.

“She was a very loving person” who “loved her family and her extended family,” said Tatiana Williams, the executive director of the TransInclusive group, a trans-led organization serving the trans and nonbinary community in South Florida.

According to NBC Miami, more than 100 people have paid their respects, bringing balloons, Teddy bears and candles to the same spot where her body was found, at the intersection of NW 32nd Avenue and NW 132nd Terrace.

Her family believes that her body was dumped there after she was shot in the head at another location.

On Monday, TransInclusive tweeted that “we must honor [the victim’s] memory with action to bring an end to this epidemic of violence that has claimed the lives of so many of our siblings.”

Williams, who met Moss many years ago, told the Daily News that murders of trans and nonbinary individuals — and Black trans women in particular — continue to increase in the U.S. because “there’s no sense of urgency,” when it comes to policymaking.

“On a national level, as it relates to policy, I think there needs to be some additional resources that are allocated to local departments when these murders are happening, to be able to help them to really do some strategic work … because oftentimes they go cold,” she said.

Moss is at least the 14th transgender person to be killed in the U.S. in 2022. Ten of them were transgender women of color, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Last year marked the deadliest year on record for trans people in the United States, with at least 56 deaths — nearly all of them were Black and Latina trans women.

The previous record was registered in 2020, when at least 44 trans people were murdered in the country.

Miami-Dade police have not released a lot of information about the incident, but authorities are said to be looking for a 2017 white Jaguar F-PACE that allegedly fled the scene.