LAPD officer shoots and kills ‘kidnapped’ trans woman after she calls 911 for help

A trans woman, Linda Becerra Moran, who called the police for help after claiming she had been kidnapped, was shot dead by officers, video footage released by the Los Angeles Police Department appears to show.

Moran, 30, was shot on 7 February at around 9.40am, following a 911 call in which she said she was being held against her will at a motel in northern LA.

She died three weeks later after being removed from life support.

During the emergency call, speaking in Spanish, a tearful Moran is heard saying there was a man in a different room of the motel who was preventing her from leaving and bringing other men into the room.

“I swear to you, I have no reason to lie,” Moran says.

A dispatcher asks: “Linda, are they forcing you to do this?”

Moran answers “yes” and sobs into the phone.

The (warning: distressing) footage from body-worn cameras shows LAPD officers entering the motel room and interviewing Moran, checking her head for injuries after she reported being struck with a bottle.

Moran became agitated and began to walk around the room, at one point telling an officer: “Don’t touch me, if you’re not going to help me.”

She moved to the kitchenette at the back of the room where she sat behind a mini fridge and began to cry.

“No, no I don’t want anything,” she sobbed. “I don’t want anything.”

The officer told Moran to “calm down” because she was screaming and crying.

Among themselves the officers talk in English about “putting her in cuffs”.

After officers made a move towards her, Moran began to push the mini fridge in their direction. She is then seen pulling a knife from the kitchenette which she held to her own throat. The police drew their weapons in response and she was shot as she moved towards them.

The officer responsible for the shooting was identified by the LAPD as Jacob Sanchez, who has been on the force for four years.

“This has such chilling connotations for survivors in LA”

Soma Snakeoil, an executive director of the Sidewalk Project, an organisation that works with homeless people in LA, told the Los Angeles Times that Moran was “fleeing from sexual violence”.

Snakeoil went on to say: “This has such chilling connotations for survivors in LA. If they’re afraid to call 911, if they’re afraid that police are going to shoot them when they call 911″.

A Sidewalk Project researcher, Kim Soriano, said she remembered that Moran was determined to survive.

“She was very resilient. She knew what she wanted and she knew what she liked and what made her comfortable,” Soriano added.