Transgender woman dies after being shot outside Indianapolis nightclub
32-year-old Ke'Yahonna Stone was trying to break up a fight between two patrons when she was shot in the head.
A transgender woman has died after being shot while trying to break up an altercation at a nightclub in northeastern Indianapolis.
Ke’Yahonna Stone, 32, had gone out with friends to Epic Ultra Lounge nightclub in Castle Run Shopping Center for a night of fun on Dec. 25.
While in the parking lot outside the club around 3:00 a.m., Stone attempted to intervene in an altercation between two patrons, hoping to defuse the situation and avoid violence. But someone pulled out a gun and began shooting, with a bullet striking Stone in the head.
“She was breaking up a fight, trying to defuse a fight that was going on. My sister didn’t have nothing to do with nothing that was going on out there,” Latroya Rucker, Stone’s sister, told Indianapolis-based CW affiliate WISH-TV.
Stone was transported to a local hospital in critical condition, and was placed on life support for two days. She later died from her injuries on Tuesday.
“I feel whoever did it, they moved off of impulse,” Rucker said of the shooter, who remains at large. “Some things you got to walk away from. It don’t make you a punk or nothing to walk away.”
Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to contact Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Homicide Detective Michael Wright by calling 317-327-3475 or emailing Michael.Wright@Indy.Gov.
See also: Houston man charged in shooting that paralyzed transgender woman he met on dating app
Friends say Stone was dedicated to providing safe spaces to members of the transgender community, including offering up her home to those seeking support.
“She didn’t want to be that person who was in the streets no more that everybody was talking about. She didn’t want to do that no more. She was changing her life,” said Marissa Miller, a friend of Stone’s and the founder of Trans Solutions Research & Resource Center, where Stone was employed. She added that people in the trans community have been stunned by the news of Stone’s death.
“Ke’Yahonna was loved by the community,” Miller said. “And the community is hurting.”
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