Police are investigating the shooting death of a 22-year-old transgender woman who was fatally shot last week at a Dallas apartment complex.
A passerby found the woman, later identified as Merci Mack, unconscious in the parking lot of the Rosemont Apartments complex in the 3000 block of East Ledbetter Drive around 6:15 a.m. last Tuesday.
Paramedics from Dallas Fire-Rescue arrived on scene and declared her dead.
Residents of the complex told officers they’d heard gunshots around 5 a.m., but police said there were no records of related 911 calls at that time, according to The Dallas Morning News.
A suspect has not yet been identified. The investigation remains ongoing.
Mack was initially “deadnamed” in media reports because she did not have ID that matched her gender identity.
According to the Morning News, more transgender people have been killed in Texas than any other state, with nearly half of those deaths occurring in Dallas.
Mack’s death at another Dallas apartment complex is reminiscent of the attack on transgender woman Muhlaysia Booker, who was beaten unconscious by a mob of people following a minor traffic accident. Booker was later found shot to death in an unrelated incident.
“Another Black transgender woman has had her life stolen from her,” Tori Cooper, the Human Rights Campaign’s director of community engagement for the Transgender Justice Initiative, said in a statement.
“We cannot become numb to the fact that our community has learned of more killings of transgender and gender non-conforming people in the past few weeks than HRC has ever tracked in the past seven years.”
Cooper continued: “Her friends say that Merci Mack was a young, upbeat soul who deserved to experience a full life. HRC is mourning with Merci’s loved ones and are calling for a full, thorough investigation into her death.”
Those with any information about the case are asked to contact Detective Brian Tabor of the Dallas Police Department Homicide Unit at (214) 671-3605 or brian.tabor@dallascityhall.com.
They can also reach out anonymously through the city’s Crime Stoppers hotline at 214-373-TIPS (8477). Crime Stoppers will pay up to $5,000 for information called into Crime Stoppers that leads to the arrest and indictment for any felony offenses.
The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals has overturned the voluntary manslaughter conviction of a man who killed a Black transgender woman, ruling that a lower court "erred" by preventing him from using the victim's transgender identity in his self-defense claim.
Samuel Ward Jr. fatally shot Paris Lee at her home in Cordova, Tennessee, on June 29, 2022. A Shelby County jury found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter in May 2025.
In testimony presented at trial, Ward's account was that he had gone to Lee's home and gotten into a verbal altercation with her, during which she asked him to leave. According to the Shelby County District Attorney's Office, he claimed Lee pointed a gun at him while they were at the top of a staircase, causing him to fall backward. He told police that he drew his own weapon and fired upward from the bottom of the stairs, striking Lee.
Jonathan McKinsey, a transgender engineering executive at The New York Times, was allegedly killed by his estranged wife's parents on September 26 amid a contentious custody dispute.
McKinsey, 40, the Times' head of engineering and games player experiences, was shot multiple times shortly after 3 p.m. at Dublin Sports Grounds in Dublin, California. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Responding to calls from witnesses, Dublin police arrested Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77, the parents of McKinsey's estranged wife, Candice Jang, reports NBC News.
President Donald Trump used an anti-transgender slur in an October 5 social media post attacking Annie Andrews, South Carolina's Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat previously held by the late Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.
In the Truth Social post, Trump paired Andrews' first name with a rhyming anti-transgender slur.
"Annie 'Trannie' Andrews is running against our wonderful Darline Graham for the Senate in South Carolina," Trump wrote in an endorsement of Graham. "Darline is a High Quality person, maybe the Highest, and Annie Trannie is not, in particular, as it pertains to representing the Values of the Great People of South Carolina -- She is in favor of Transgender for Everyone, Open Borders, Defunding the Police, High Taxes, a Weak Military, and will absolutely fight to take your guns away -- In other words, she is against our Great Second Amendment!"
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