Cameron Thompson was shot multiple times just after few blocks away from her home.
Nikki Matthews-Cunningham, the mother of Cameron Thompson, a Black teenager who was shot and killed in Alabama on Dec. 16, told the Associated Press that she believes her daughter was killed because she was transgender.
The 18-year-old girl was shot several times in the early morning hours on Monday, and her body was found later that afternoon, only a few blocks away from her home.
According to the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit, Captain Jack Kennedy, 37-year-old Matthews-Cunningham believes that Thompson was killed because of her gender identity.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Matthews-Cunningham said, “Of course it was a hate crime.” She continued to suggest that if a cisgender girl said something about the suspected shooting on social media, “He wouldn’t have lured her out of her home and killed her. But because my child was transgender, that’s why he did it. I hate this happened to her, all because of her choice of wanting to be who she was. That’s the only reason she is dead.”