LAPD homicide detectives continued their search for clues in two fatal shootings this week of women who police say were engaged in sex work. The body of one victim, a transgender woman, was dumped on a South Los Angeles street from a car that was seen fleeing the area.
Police said Thursday that they had not made any arrests in any of the homicides.
The most recent shooting occurred early Thursday morning near the corner of West 70th and Figueroa streets, and the previous incident occurred Tuesday night on Hoover Street, a block west of the Figueroa Corridor, an area of south Los Angeles with a long history of sex trade activity.
None of the victims have been publicly identified.
Police said officers found the first victim shortly after 8 p.m. after responding to reports of a body lying on Hoover, between Slauson Avenue and West 59th Street. Officers found the woman's broken fingernail and a can of Mace near her, suggesting a fight occurred.
The Times reviewed surveillance camera video from a sports bar across the street from where the body was found. The images, obscured by the glare of a streetlight, show a light-colored sedan with its lights off next to a high school parking lot. At some point, a figure emerges and appears to drag the body to the sidewalk, before returning to the car and driving off. The body remained on the road for several minutes in view of passing motorists, before the first police teams arrived at the scene.
The victim was apparently shot in the car after a sexual encounter that went wrong for reasons that are unclear, police said, without elaborating. Police say sex workers working in the area are usually picked up by clients, who drive to one of the motels on that stretch of Figueroa or park on a nearby street. Sometimes these encounters turn violent for the workers, police said, at the hands of clients or pimps.
Jen Elizabeth, street engagement director for the nonprofit Sidewalk Project, warned against assuming that transgender people who dress provocatively are sex workers. At the same time, she said, social attitudes toward those who do the work (whether by choice or out of fear or desperation) have normalized acts of violence.
Transgender people are especially vulnerable, Elizabeth said, describing cases of clients who lashed out at a transgender worker after an encounter because they were struggling with their own sexuality. “Out of that shame comes anger, and they get angry, and then they look at this woman and feel like it's her fault they're gay,” Elizabeth said.
The second incident in Figueroa occurred shortly after 4 a.m. Thursday, when police found a young woman who had been shot in the back of the head. She is believed to have been around 20 years old. As in the other murder, the victim was shot with a 9mm handgun, police said.
Detectives received a general description of the vehicle suspected of being connected to that murder and were gathering other evidence, but they also asked for the public's help in finding the shooter.
The shootings follow a homicide last month in what police say is another “prostitution strip” on Western Avenue, in which a 25-year-old woman was killed when someone in a passing vehicle fired shots at the corner where she was standing. Was standing. A 60-year-old man not home and nearby was also injured but survived.
