Saturday, October 2, 2010

Erika Keels

Hit-or-Run Over

Why isn't anybody seeking answers about a transgendered prostitute's death anymore?






Published: Nov 20, 2007

CRIME
THE SCENE OF THE INCIDENT: At Broad and Thompson, Erika Keels was either killed by an angry John or accidentally struck by an elderly driver.
Michael T. Regan

THE SCENE OF THE INCIDENT: At Broad and Thompson, Erika Keels was either killed by an angry John or accidentally struck by an elderly driver.

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)
his much is clear: Erika Keels, a 21-year-old transgendered prostitute, was killed on North Broad Street early in the morning on March 21. But, depending upon which account of her death one believes, she was either accidentally struck by an elderly driver who wasn't wearing his prescription glasses, or repeatedly run over by a crazed John.
Police report that Keels was standing in the street, close to the curb near the Thompson Street intersection and that she was struck at 5:04 a.m. by a late-model Lincoln Town Car driven by Roland Bottom, 70, of Germantown, who was on his way to work. Keels traveled 65 feet through the air, smashed through the rear windshield of another car and then finally landed unconscious next to a fire hydrant in front of McJay's Food Market.
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The Medical Examiner's Office initially classified the incident as a hit-and-run, but police said that wasn't true; their report stated Bottom's vehicle came to a halt about 100 feet past Keels' injured body. Finding no brake marks on the roadway, police stated Bottom "simply didn't see Keels." After admitting to speeding and not wearing his prescription glasses, he was released after brief questioning; he'd later be issued a traffic citation.
Keels died two days later, on March 23, from multiple injuries, according to her death certificate. But the incident left local trans activists lobbing accusations on blogs and in fliers; the phrase "hate crime" was bandied about since some found Keels' death representative of the underlying ills of an anti-trans society in Philadelphia.
By May, activists were rallying support and the Philadelphia Gay Newsrepeatedly questioned officials about why serious charges hadn't been filed. Led by Savannah Hornback, who said she's one of Keels' close friends, the "Justice 4 Erika" campaign accumulated more than 3,000 online signatures to "demand a thorough investigation of the circumstances surrounding Ms. Keels' death."
The petition read, "Her case must be re-opened. Now and in the future, the police must follow their mandate to protect and serve all Philadelphians, including those targeted for hate because of their gender expression and identity."
The words are justifiable when considering that the petition stated, "witnesses saw an assailant intentionally run over Ms. Keels four times after ejecting her from his car." After a June 14 rally outside the Roundhouse, Mary Kalyna of the Global Women's Strike, a worldwide network promoting the remuneration of war funding for peaceful purposes, said, "It seemed like something could be done — like justice could actually be served. We were excited people were listening, that maybe we could stop this kind of treatment of people who the police dub unworthy of fair treatment."
But by late July, PGN stopped writing about Keels. The allegations and blog posts ceased. Even the "Justice 4 Erika" MySpace page went stagnant. It hasn't been logged onto since Aug. 17; the most recent "friend comments" were spam advertisements for Macy's and sexiluv.com.
So, why did the interest fade? Police Capt. Michael Murphy offers a simple explanation.
"There's nothing more going on here than two people who weren't paying attention to what they were doing," he says. "This is a case of negligence. It's sad, but only one witness came forward, and that individual corroborated the details of our investigation." Murphy says he waited for more witnesses, information and testimony from Hornback, but has yet to receive anything that rises to the level of reopening the case. In fact, he's seen very little about the case in recent months. Not much recorded testimony exists to counter the official conclusions.
Poet CAConrad, who worked with Hornback to organize the June protests, says he hasn't seen Hornback since June. Sabina Neem, an activist at Attic Youth Center's Safe Outside the System program, declined to answer whether she had been in contact with Hornback. A receptionist at the William Way Center said she saw Hornback passing out fliers before the June protest, but hasn't seen her since. City Paper repeatedly called multiple phone numbers and messaged multiple e-mail addresses supposedly connected to Hornback but received no reply.
Murphy insists that Hornback — their only contact to supply witnesses corroborating murder implications — simply never pursued the case. But Neem implies that Hornback and her witnesses were intimidated by police.
"I have witnessed the ways in which trans people of color are constantly scrutinized, harassed, physically harmed, arrested or asked to exchange sexual favors to be left alone by law enforcement," she says. "Police use gender non-conformity — often conflated with age, race and socioeconomic status — as grounds for suspicion and discriminate enforcement of the law."
Meanwhile, Conrad maintains, "I spoke to several witnesses who all say they were really aggressively intimidated by the police, and told that they need to give their given names, which of course none of them want to do." He implies that, because the witnesses are prostitutes shunned often not only by society, but also by their families, they would rather sit silent than go public with their identities and their statements.
"If you hit someone with a car, that's a crime in itself," Conrad continues. "When you have witnesses who say that it was a murder, witnesses who say Erika was pushed out of the car and run over, how can you say nothing happened? It's like [the police] don't even fucking care."
But with nobody having come forward with fresh information about the case since the protests, all Murphy can do is say that there's no evidence to suggest any of Conrad's accusations ring true.

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