Transgender woman who escaped Alabama for her safety beaten & left for dead near National Mall in D.C.

On June 29, in the dark hours before the dawn, Cala Calhoun was bleeding near the unconscious and near the national shopping center, his skirt was torn and soaked with blood, and his body was almost beyond recognition. He came Washington, DCIn January, hopes of security. Instead, the three men in the Scooter besieged him, he screamed his anti-transignments, and beat him, and left him to death.

“I lived inside AlabamaAnd this was somehow becoming insecure transgender Calhoun 43 -year -old Calhoun said. I moved to DC because I thought it would be safer. Oh, no. “

Grinned. “To be honest, I have passed my mind, perhaps if he wants to make another version of ‘ironic’, I have to reach Alanis Morissette.”

It started as an ordinary Saturday night. Calhoun, a Sommereer and a bartender in Annabelle restaurant, finished a late shift, turned into a needle of skirt and rainbow and left his work clothes behind. Around 12:45, he stepped into the Golden Age, a bar about a block from Annabelle for a fast beer.

Then the wheel climbed the electrical board and Rock Creek moved along the Parkway and departed from Georgetown. He remembers a well -known Filomena that he had a dolambaç fraud. Italian The restaurant in Georgetown comes out of a tunnel passing the Kennedy Center and shining in the damp summer darkness of the Washington monument.

Later, as the Lincoln Monument approached the National Shopping Center, three men in Scooter came out of the shadows. “They started to attack me verbally, Cal Calhoun remembered. “They said to me Slurs. You know, as Queer people, we all dealt with it.”

He tried to get away. But the men followed. “Somehow they pushed me from the wheel,” he said. “I remember fell into a tree and engraved my knee and my elbow. But I gathered my wheel and tried to escape.”

Cayla Calhoun continues onewheel on Washington DCCourtesy Cala Calhoun

It was not enough.

Orum I don’t know how long, ”he said. “But I know there is a point I pushed again. In my head, ‘I have to escape. This is no longer a man who makes fun of me. I have to escape.” That was the last thing he remembered.

According to a metropolitan police department incident report, LawyerCalhoun, 19. Street and Constitutional Street NW near the sidewalk of the emergency medical intervention teams were discovered. Initially confused, he told EMTS that he had fallen out of his skaters several times that day. Later, the police reported that EMTs were attacked by three people out of three miles from where he found him.

The police report said that attackers used a slurry about hatred and prejudice and that Calhoun believed that he aims to gender identity. The document states that the injuries are mostly on the right side of his body.

Emergency teams found him around 6 in the morning and ran to George Washington University Hospital.

Their injuries were destructive: shake, multiple broken ribs, a broken vertebrae, a shattered elbow, a seven fracture around the eye socket, a broken palate and a broken femur. Sixty percent of his body was rotten, some of them in the form of fingerprints around his neck, evidence, probably drowning, he said.

Cayla Calhoun after being attackedCourtesy Cala Calhoun

Even when he was a kid, he knew who Calhoun was.

Growing up at Upstate new YorkThe daughter of a minister remembers her family’s weekly grocery trips to the city. At the age of four or five, he began to act as a sick so that he could stay alone at home.

Im I would go to my sister’s room and look at her clothes, ”he said. “I would choose the most cute one, I would buy some socks, we would wear, I would find my sister’s makeup, and I would wear some lipstick and eye shadow. I’m sure it looked like a five -year -old boy.

This sense of self never left him. But he almost cost him his life.

When Calhoun woke up in the hospital, he said his skirt was broken and bloody. Many of his belongings were thrown by the hospital staff who suspected that he misunderstood him for a homeless person.

“When the police realized who I am, most of these first evidence is gone,” he said.

Four days later, the detectives visited the hospital bed. “They said they were there by the order of the 1st commander,” he said. “I was still foggy. I can’t remember every detail.” He says he’s never heard from the police since then.

An MPD spokesman told Lawyer It is investigated that the case is “potentially motivated by hate or prejudice”.

Friends and foreigners gathered around Calhoun. Ellen Vaughn, friend of Calhoun’s roommate, Gofundme donation collection This Monday after the afternoon collected more than $ 19,000.

Vaughn wrote, although the attackers tried to crush his body, they could not crush his soul, ”he wrote.

Calhoun’s access went far beyond the capital. Nick Craig from the Brix Cheese Shop & Wine Bar in Iowa, Iowa City, has released Calhoun online about the attack, which defines Calhoun as a part of a community of hospitality and hospitality.

“Crala is a part of my community, if you read it, it means it’s a part of you, Cra said Craig wrote. “Even though we have never met in person, we have been associated with the world of great wine and hospitality. I have the privilege of witnessing professionalism, passion, humor and power for many years, as a member of a special social media group for people like him and me – we make the wine a part of who we are and we use it to build a community around us.

Calhoun said that the attack brought an unexpected gift: his family finally accepted his identity.

“For the first time in my life last week, my family was referring to me as Caya or used my pronouns correctly,” he said. “For this reason.”

Physically, Calhoun faces a long recovery.

“Fine motor skills are terrible,” he said. “I am trying to use a really small iPhone at a two-year-old.

Emotionally circulates between spiritual insight and deep fear.

“Someone, spiritually, I’m awake. I’m as awake as I have so far. But emotionally, I don’t know what it looks like,” he said. “As a Sommelier, a server, as a bartender, I can trust both hands that right -wing people heard about trans people a week. I don’t know how this will work in the future.”

And he believes that the current political climate fueled attacks like him.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Narrative, speech points, disinformation from hand to hand, using blanket words to refer to a very special human class, written by people like Republicans and Donald Trump, are all deliberate.”

Caya CalhounCourtesy Cala Calhoun

As he recovers, Calhoun works on a book about hospitality, a mixture of personal memories and the teachings of Ram Dass and Thomas Merton. Dass was a spiritual teacher known to blend Eastern philosophy with Western psychology, Merton, a trappist monk and a productive writer who investigated the works of contemplation, social justice and interstate.

“Something that is really common in my head lately, the duality between fear and love,” he said. “Even at work, how do you behave in your unusual assistant. People are rude because they are scared. At that time they get bad help, then they are crazy. This is an endless cycle.”

The same fear believes in anti -trans violence.

“I had friends, I said, ‘Let me know if you find them, I will kill them.’ “Especially as a trans person, if I had lived my life with fear, I would be far from who I was. When we lived from love, this is different. The things that are no longer familiar are not dangerous.”

Still, he accepts the truth.

“This may be a tragedy, and this is a tragedy. It will be eight weeks to work again. Terrible,” Calhoun said. “But I hope it makes people learn to be themselves, and other people who learn to accept people because they are themselves. This makes the burden a little lighter.”

Calhoun continues to think about another trans woman. A week after the attack, until almost 28 -year -old Dream Johnson was shot and killed In northeast DC

“The dream died for a week, the difference of 20 minutes,” Calhoun said. “He’s dead and I’m not. It hurts.”

Johnson’s murder is under investigation. The police offer a $ 25,000 award for information.

According to MPD dataBefore 1 July, there were nine hate crimes, motivated by prejudices against gender identity or expression, which decreased from 15 in the same period last year. However, defenders warn that many attacks have not been reported.

Lawyer DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office to comment. DC Deputy Mayor of Public Security and Justice Lindsey Appiah said in a statement, “There is nothing more important than our efforts to reduce crimes and make our city safer for all our residents and visitors. When compared to 2024, the crimes related to gender identity/expression are still in the region.

“It’s not an increase in violence against transsexual people. It is part of a right -wing plan, Cal said Calhoun said. “They do nothing to help the American people, but the things that help them force their agenda are absolutely resourceful.”

In 2015, Calhoun, who began to be presented to the public as a feminine and emerged in the beginning of 2023, refuses to hide.

“I hope that some people have seen humanity throughout this situation,” he said. “And if everything all makes some people see, then it’s a little better.”

Editor’s Note: This article was updated to include the comments of Public Security and Justice Lindsey Appiah Deputy Mayor of DC.

This article was initially published at the Law on Law: The transsexual woman who escaped from Alabama went to Dead for Dead for Dead near the National Mall in DC

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