https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/us/koko-da-doll-shooting-atlanta-kokomo-city.html

Koko Da Doll, Star of Film on Transgender Sex Workers, Is Killed in Atlanta

The 35-year-old was featured in “Kokomo City,” a documentary about four Black transgender sex workers that won awards at the Sundance Film Festival this year.

By Michael Levenson
April 21, 2023
Koko Da Doll, who was featured in “Kokomo City,” a documentary about four Black transgender sex workers that won awards at the Sundance Film Festival this year, was fatally shot in Atlanta on Tuesday, the film’s director said.

Koko Da Doll, 35, whose name was Rasheeda Williams, “was the latest victim of violence against Black transgender women,” the director, D. Smith, said in a statement.

“I created ‘Kokomo City’ because I wanted to show the fun, humanized, natural side of Black trans women,” Ms. Smith said. “I wanted to create images that didn’t show the trauma or the statistics of murder of transgender lives. I wanted to create something fresh and inspiring. I did that. We did that! But here we are again.”

The Atlanta Police Department said that it was actively investigating three violent crimes against transgender women this year — the fatal shooting on Tuesday, another fatal shooting on April 11 and a shooting that critically injured a female victim in January.

“While these individual incidents are unrelated, we are very aware of the epidemic-level violence Black and Brown transgender women face in America,” the department said in a statement.

The department said it was exploring the possibility that the shootings were motivated by hate.

But it added: “In these cases, our investigators have not found any indication the victim was targeted for being transgender or a member of the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community, and these cases do not appear to be random acts of violence.”

The police did not release the name of the victim in Tuesday’s killing, and an investigator at the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said on Friday that the victim’s family had asked that the name not be released.

The police asked for the public’s help in identifying a person who was seen on surveillance footage. A brief video clip released by the Atlanta Police Department showed a person wearing a football-style jersey with No.. 2 on the front walking through a parking lot and up the stairs outside a house at night.

The Human Rights Campaign said that at least 10 transgender or gender nonconforming people have been killed in the United States this year, although many of the deaths are not reported or are misreported.

Since 2013, a total of 19 transgender or gender-nonconforming people have been killed in Georgia, the organization said, and nine of those killings occurred in Atlanta.

Ms. Williams starred in “Kokomo City,” along with Liyah Mitchell, Dominque Silver and Daniella Carter. The film, which was shot in black and white, was praised by critics for its frank exploration of themes of labor, race, gender, beauty and sex, and it won the NEXT Innovator Award and Audience Award: NEXT at Sundance.

Harris Doran, a producer of “Kokomo City,” said he was grief-stricken and, “To know Koko, was to love Koko.”

“She was the sweetest, kindest and gentlest soul,” he said on Instagram, adding: “Koko was working so hard to get out. She is brilliant in the film and when you see it, you will fall in love with her just as we all have.”

Mr. Doran said her killing was “the reason sex work should be decriminalized.”

“Sex work is work,” he said. “If it were not made illegal for purely puritanical reasons, then it could be regulated and women like Koko could be protected.”

The Sundance Film Festival said on Twitter that it was honored that Koko Da Doll had attended the festival, “where she reminded Black trans women, ‘We can do anything, we can be whatever we want to be.’”