Trans Sex Worker Kills Client After He Demands Money Back
Leniyah Butler was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter for shooting Hamza Walupupu in the eye and then covering up the crime.
After two days of deliberations, a San Francisco jury found Leniyah Butler, 21, guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting of Hamza Walupupu, 32, on November 12, 2023.
However, it also found Butler not guilty of a more serious charge of second-degree murder.
Walupupu picked Butler up in “The Blade,” a known cruising area in the city’s Tenderloin district where transgender and gender-nonconforming sex workers are known to congregate, according to the Bay Area Reporter.
He then drove his Hyundai Accent to a parking lot near Crissy Field, a remote public recreation area filled with marshes and beaches.
According to evidence presented by prosecutors at trial, once inside the park, Butler performed a sex act on Walupupu.
But he demanded his money back and expressed surprise after Butler revealed she is transgender. She then shot Walupupu once in the eye, killing him.
Butler then drove Walupupu’s car to Hunters Point, a neighborhood in southeast San Francisco, and tried to wipe away fingerprints and DNA. She allegedly spent the rest of the morning scattering physical evidence, including disposing of the murder weapon.
Butler, who pleaded not guilty, was tried in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
At trial, prosecutors sought to prove that Butler acted intentionally when she shot Walupupu, pointing to a confession she made after being detained and questioned by FBI agents, and arguing that she had deliberately sought to cover up the crime by disposing of evidence.
“Ms. Butler did not say [Walupupu] was drunk or driving erratically or that he threatened to rape or kill her,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelsey Davidson argued in court. “She was the one with the gun, and he was outside the car.”
Instead, Davidson said, the motive for the murder was anger. She said that Walupupu “was not posing an imminent threat,” and alleged that Butler “shot him because she was mad, because she wanted the money, because she didn’t want to look ‘dumb as fuck,’ because she didn’t want to be stranded, because she didn’t want to be cold.”
David Rizk, one of Butler’s defense attorneys, argued that his client acted in self-defense.
“He isolated her for a reason,” Rizk said of Walupupu’s driving Butler to Crissy Field. “He took her there to get his sex for free, to sexually assault her, to put her in fear. He never intended to pay. He was never going to pay, and the trouble began when she would not go along with it.”
Rizk sought to paint Walupupu has having had an undiagnosed mental illness, bringing up his alleged belief that he was under a voodoo spell, alleging that he was paranoid about people wanting to kill him, and noting that he had been prescribed aripiprazole, a medication that can be used to treat schizophrenia or depression.
The jury ultimately found Butler guilty of voluntary manslaughter. She is scheduled to be sentenced on June 27, and could face up to 15 years in jail.
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