Soldier Charged with Murder of Trans Woman in Texas

A soldier, Anthony Bowden, has been charged with the murder of a transgender woman in El Paso last month.

Erykah Tijerina, 36, was found dead “with obvious signs of foul play,” according to the El Paso Police Department. The 24-year-old soldier has been charged with her murder.

“On September 13, 2016, a Fort Bliss Soldier, SPC Anthony M. Bowden, assigned to the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, was arrested by the El Paso Police Department as part of an ongoing murder investigation. This incident occurred off-post, and as such, we are cooperating with local authorities, who are exercising jurisdiction in this matter. As this is an ongoing criminal investigation, we cannot provide any further comment,” LTC Patrick Husted told the San Antonio Express-News.

Police are not ruling out Tijerina’s murder being a hate crime, which is defined by the FBI as being a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”

“We are looking into that (hate crime) aspect,” Keith A. Byers, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI in El Paso, told the El Paso Times.

Bowden is being held in El Paso County Jail on a  $750,000 bond, according to online county records.

Tijerina’s family set up a GoFundMe page to help with the funeral expenses.

“For all the ones she loved and she helped we asked you find in your heart to help us with this for her,” Kathleen Tijerina Gonzales, Tijerina’s sister, wrote on the page. “This is so important to us because we unexpectedly had to receive this news so soon. It’s hard for us to accept it let alone be able to arrange her funeral arrangement.”

So far, $1,822 has been raised.

Tijerina is one of the 18 transgender people who have been “fatally shot, stabbed and killed by other violent means,” so far this year. She is also the third trans murder in Texas this year alone.