Jury selection is expected to begin this week in the 2019 shooting death of 23-year-old Muhlaysia Booker, a Black transgender woman.
Police arrested Kendrell Lavar Lyles weeks after the murder. Now, more than four years later, it appears he will soon have his day in court. One local leader in the trans community tells us they’ll be watching closely.
Leslie McMurray remembers hearing the news about Booker and attending her funeral soon after. She said it’s been difficult to wait for justice.
“It breaks my heart that Muhlaysia will forever be young because her life was taken away from her. She didn’t get an opportunity to live those hopes and dreams,” McMuurray said.
Kendrell Lavar Lyles was arrested in June 2019 for the murder of Booker, who was found shot to death weeks earlier on Valley Glen Drive.
“If indeed this person is responsible for taking Muhlaysia’s life, I hope he faces the full weight of the criminal justice system,”
Booker made headlines before her death after a video went viral showing several people assaulting her in a Dallas parking lot after a car crash on Wilhurt Avenue.
McMurray is the transgender education and advocacy associate for the nonprofit Resource Center in Dallas. In the case of Muhlaysia’s attack and subsequent murder, McMurray said the question for the trans community is why this happened.
“Was she killed because she was transgender and this person hated her, or was there something else going on? You always want to have those answers, and it’s one of those things that, frustratingly, you may never receive,” she said.
Lyles’s arrest in 2019 came after tips pointed police to him as a suspect in the deaths of two other North Texas women. McMurray said she, like so many others who advocate for trans and gay communities, will follow this case from beginning to end as a show of support for Muhlyasia Booker and many others who never make headlines.
“Our lives aren’t disposable,” said McMurray. “We’re not disposable people.”
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