Trans woman attacked with hammer in Queens
Police are investigating the attack as a possible hate crime, given what the assailant yelled at the victim
A transgender woman was hospitalized after being hit in the head with a hammer in Queens, N.Y. The 28-year-old woman was attacked from behind while walking along 67th Street in the Woodside neighborhood at around 6 a.m. on Wednesday morning.
The victim told police that the attacker, a man, yelled, “This is what you get for being gay.” Police are investigating the attack as a possible hate crime, reports New York’s WABC.
The New York Daily News spoke to newspaper deliverywoman Bertha Zanabriga, who came to the victim’s aid shortly after the attack. Zanabriga said the victim told her to call an ambulance, adding, “somebody hit we with a hammer in my head and I’m bleeding.”
When police arrived on scene, the victim was bleeding heavily from a severe head laceration. She was treated at Elmhurst Hospital and released. The attacker remains at large.
So far, in 2016, 19 transgender people in the United States have been killed because of anti-trans violence. That follows what was considered a record year in 2015, when at least 22 transgender individuals were murdered. Those statistics do not include those attacks lodged against trans individuals where the victim survived. In May, New York police began searching for three men suspected of attacking a transgender woman in Brooklyn. And in June, a Seattle transgender man was attacked after attending a vigil in memory of the victims of the mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub.
Locally, one transgender woman shot on the Fourth of July died of her injuries a few weeks later. In August, another trans women ended up in critical condition after being stabbed in Northeast D.C. during the middle of the day. That follows an August attack of two transgender women at a 7-11 in Wheaton, and the slaying of a transgender woman in a Maryland hotel room in April.
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