Genderfluid teen was ‘kidnapped and murdered after boys discovered they were non-binary’
(Facebook/Kedarie Johnson)
A genderfluid teenager was kidnapped, suffocated and brutally executed after two cousins who picked them up discovered they were non-binary.
16-year-old Kedarie Johnson was shot to death last year in Iowa.
Jorge “Lumni” Sanders-Galvez is charged with first-degree murder.
(Facebook/Kedarie Johnson)
The case is being investigated by Donald Trump’s Department of Justice as a hate crime, per the orders of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Prominent civil rights attorney Christopher J. Perras was parachuted in to help with the investigation.
(Facebook/Kedarie Johnson)
If found guilty of murder with a hate crime motive, Sanders-Galvez could face the death penalty.
Johnson, who did not identify as transgender, enjoyed dressing in women’s clothes and sometimes went by the name Kandicee.
He had girlfriends, but “preferred boys,” their mother Katrina said.
Perras told the court that the victim was kidnapped, suffocated and executed by Sanders-Galvez and his cousin and co-defendant Jaron Purham.
They both thought the teenager was an attractive girl, he said in his opening statements to a jury of 11 white people and one black person.
(Facebook/Kedarie Johnson)
Perras described Johnson as “a friendly high school student with a bright future” who sometimes dressed as a girl.
He said the teenager was wearing a pink headband and hair extensions when Sanders-Galvez and his cousin saw them at a shop.
The men followed Johnson in their car, then took them to a home in the small city of Burlington, the prosecutor added.
He said that a struggle ensued during a sexual encounter, after which point the cousins suffocated Johnson, shot them and dumped their body in an alley.
(Facebook/Kedarie Johnson)
According to The Des Moines Register, the prosecution’s motion says: “The state will offer evidence to show the defendant Sanders-Galvez saw Kedarie leave the Hy-Vee; flirted with Kedarie, believing that Kedarie was biologically female”.
The defendant “invited Kedarie back to 2610 Madison to have sex with him and his co-defendant; discovered during the sexual act that Kedarie was biologically male; became enraged; and then, over the next hour, suffocated Kedarie by stuffing a rag down his throat and wrapping a plastic bag around his head, threw him in their car, drove to another part of town, dumped him in an alley, and shot him several times until he bled to death,” the motion adds.
Johnson’s mother Katrina has said while she “loved” that the government had intervened, “it shouldn’t have taken for a child to lose his life, and for everybody to think it was a hate crime, for them to step up and do something”.
The move by Sessions to send a US Attorney seems on the face of it to be a complete u-turn, considering that he has taken multiple steps to damage the LGBT community.
Two weeks ago, it was found that the Attorney General has been working with an anti-LGBT hate group.
(Getty)
Sessions, a hardline opponent of LGBT rights, has worked over the past monthto undermine protections for LGBT people across the federal government, in a series of decisions reversing Obama administration guidance.
He issued a directive protecting “the right to perform or abstain from performing certain physical acts in accordance with one’s beliefs”, granting an unlimited license to discriminate against LGBT people based on religion.
Under his leadership, the Justice Department has rolled back civil rights protections for transgender people, and has also made an uninvited intervention into a discrimination case this year to argue against discrimination protections for gay employees.
And it emerged that his actions were taken after extensive consultation with Alliance Defending Freedom.
(Getty)
This listed anti-LGBT hate group has repeatedly lobbied to undermine LGBT rights across the US.
But Sessions has consistently cracked down on hatred against the LGBT community – as long as it’s in the form of crime.
In a speech at June’s 2017 Hate Crime summit, Sessions said he would “continue to enforce hate crime laws aggressively and appropriately where (transgender) individuals are victims.”
