Amber Monroe was fatally shot in Palmer Park, the location of three alleged hate crimes against trans women in 2014, in a city where misinformed authorities and a lack of opportunities keep transgender people vulnerable to violence

Police are treating as a homicide the death of a black transgender woman from Detroit who was fatally shot Saturday morning.

Around 5am on Saturday, Amber Monroe – a Detroit resident who friends described as an outgoing, charismatic individual who “loved to dance” – was shot and killed as she exited a vehicle near the intersection of 6 Mile and Woodward, according to police.

The area, known as Palmer Park, was the location of three separate alleged hate crimes against transgender women in 2014.

Few other details have been uncovered about her death. A spokesperson for the Detroit police department told the Guardian its preliminary investigation showed a male was shot at the location. The Wayne County medical examiner’s office identified Monroe’s body using her biological name and said the autopsy revealed she died of a single gunshot wound.

The decision to misgender Monroe as male outraged trans advocates who knew the 20-year-old, saying it’s disrespectful, particularly in death.

“If somebody is looking for us, and we do have supportive families, we’re not going to get found in a timely manner because they misgender,” said Julisa Abad, a 30-year-old transgender advocate from Detroit.

Without accurate record-keeping, she said: “How can we actually keep track of the amount of transgender people who are murdered?” According to the National LGBTQ Task Force, Monroe was the 12th transgender or gender-nonconforming person killed in 2015, a likely conservative number that may eclipse 2013 and 2014 totals. The Guardian couldn’t immediately reach Monroe’s next of kin.

The issue of locating friends and family, or simply finding answers about a loved one, was a particular issue in 2011, when a 19-year-old trans woman of color, Shelly “Treasure” Hilliard, was murdered on the city’s east side. Her life was documented in a recent film, Treasure.

At the time of Hilliard’s disappearance, weeks passed without anyone receiving answers of Hilliard’s whereabouts, said Bré Campbell, a transgender Detroit resident and National LGBTQ Task Force fellow.

“I remember hearing about her being missing three weeks before [she was found dead] and not really being given an answer for the community, for her mother, until three weeks later,” Campbell told the Guardian. “I think that’s something the community needs to understand about misgendering transgender people.”

The events that unfolded Saturday were not foreign to Monroe: she had previously been shot on two separate occasions in the Palmer Park area, Abad told the Guardian.

Nonetheless, Monroe was “very outgoing … always had a smile”, she said. Her experience highlighted common issues transgender women face in the city, Abad said. “She had to be out there; she did go to school, so I know she wanted to better herself, but unfortunately, especially being so young, she didn’t have many options, either,” Abad said.

According to the task force, one in four trans individuals have experienced violence; similarly, one in four trans women are more likely to live in extreme poverty, with an income of less than $10,000 annually, said Stacey Long Simmons, director of public policy and government affairs with the group.

Trans individuals in Detroit particularly also face a dire predicament when it comes to housing.

Homeless shelters in the city require them to identify by the gender they were assigned at birth, said Campbell. The decision is a double-edged sword: they could sleep indoors among a group who likely doesn’t understand their situation. The other option is to live without shelter, Campbell said, “which I think is very demeaning and dehumanizing”.

Campbell first met Monroe from Wayne State University’s Horizons Project, which specializes in HIV/Aids care for adolescents. (Initial media reports indicated Monroe studied at Wayne State, but a spokesperson told the Guardian she didn’t attend the university.)

“She was a young lady in the community who really looked up to me as a kind of mentor,” Campbell said. The pair often discussed Monroe’s life goals and dreams. “We were working on a plan to try make sure that she got all her needs addressed,” Campbell said.

Monroe strived to be employed and showed interest in doing HIV work, similar to what Campbell did in the community. “She wanted to facilitate groups and talk to people about their issues they were having,” Campbell said.

Palmer Park has historically been a LGBT-friendly neighborhood. The area provides trans individuals with a community, as well as access to resources “that they have been pushed away from like healthcare [and] housing”, said Cherno Biko, a national trans rights activist who broke the story on social media.

But the neighborhood, which has seen an influx of new housing and development, still bears witness to violent episodes: in 2014, four transgender women were killed in the area alone, according to Abad, who moved several years ago to Detroit from Florida.

“The area in general is bad,” Abad said. “They target us, you get robbed, you obviously do what you do with a date, you get pushed out of cars.”

She added: “When you call the police and try to advocate for the girls who are out there … they try to de-prioritize the situation and bring up the fact they were prostituting. Whether they were prostituting or selling jelly beans, nobody deserves to be killed.”

Still, said Campbell, there’s a misconception that Palmer Park exists solely as a place where people visit to “participate in, or to access sex work, and that’s not necessarily true”.

“It’s a community park,” she said. “A lot of the trans women who are homeless, and even LGBT youth who are homeless hang out at Palmer Park during the day. It’s a very well-known area to the community itself.”

Yvonne Siferd, director of victim services at Equality Michigan, said trans women in Detroit regularly face street harassment “not just by passers by, but also police departments who think these women are in some way committing fraud - that they’re trying to pull one over on people in terms of who they are”.

“There’s a lot of mistrust on the side of law enforcement,” she said.

Biko said that mistrust may explain why Monroe didn’t feel comfortable turning to law enforcement officials after being shot on two occasions.

Supporters plan to hold a private vigil at near Palmer Park Monday evening, according to Abad.

“She loved to dance,” Campbell said. “She always came to groups really excited to learn and … she really wanted to educate the community on the issues that were facing the trans community.”

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