Ciara Minaj Carter is the 22nd Trans Homicide Victim in 2018

Content Warning: This story depicts graphic violence against a transgender person.

Last year on her birthday, the last one she would ever have, Ciara Minaj Carter Frazier wondered if she should “go MIA again.”

“[I guess] I won’t be doing anything tonight, but thanks for birthday wishes,” she wrote on Facebook.

She wanted to spend her birthday with friends. She even posted a countdown. But as the day wore on, and plans never formed, she gave up.

“I’m not mobile so I’ll be on someone’s time all day,” she said.

“Ah damn that means I can’t see u later then,” her friend wrote.

And then, without explanation, her party was back on for 8:00 pm. Her friends were showing up.

Those friends expressed disbelief Thursday when word broke that Frazier was stabbed to death and left outside an abandoned building on Chicago’s West Side Wednesday night. She was one month and a day away from her 32nd birthday.  

Frazier is 2018’s 22nd transgender homicide victim in a time of unprecedented violence against transgender women of color in the U.S. Frazier is the second transgender woman murdered in Chicago just over a month.

Neither the Chicago Police Department nor the Cook County Medical Examiner identified Frazier as transgender. Natalia Derevyanny, a spokesperson for the Medical Examiner, said officials were waiting to obtain Frazier’s ID before determining her gender, while Chicago Police identified her as male.

Erik Roldan, director of marketing and communications for the LGBTQ medical provider Howard Brown Health Center, confirmed Frazier’s identity as a trans woman to INTO.

According to Chicago Police Officer Michelle Tannehill, Frazier died of multiple stab wounds.

“The victim was in an abandoned apartment building with an unknown male,” Tannehill told INTO. “They got into an argument and the offender stabbed the victim.”

Frazier was found unresponsive in a backyard behind an apartment building on the 4500 block of West Adams in the city’s Garfield Park neighborhood. Tannehill said the killer is believed to have fled the scene in a white Hyundai. Police recovered two weapons from the scene.

No arrests have been made in the ongoing investigation.

A media statement from Trans March on D.C. detailed severe trauma to Frazier.

“Her naked body was found with multiple stab wounds and her genitalia had been severed from her body,” the organization said. “Her devastated family was supportive of her and have reported that they have been searching for her over the last five weeks.”

Neither police nor the Medical Examiner’s office would speak to those details. Police spokesperson Tannehill said Frazier’s death is being investigated as first-degree murder. Frazier’s autopsy will not be released until her case is closed, said Derevyanny.

Frazier’s death marks the fifth transgender homicide in Illinois in just three years. Last year was the deadliest in recorded history for transgender people, with 29 trans people killed in the U.S. This year is on track to match or outpace that total.

Image via Facebook