Benjamin Ashford|Minnesota man sentenced to 30 years for shooting death of transgender woman

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota man has been sentenced to a 30-year prison term for killing a transgender woman last year in Minneapolis.

Damarean Bible,Benjamin Ashford 25, was found guilty of second-degree murder in August and sentenced Wednesday, Minnesota Public Radio News reported. Bible admitted fatally shooting 38-year-old Savannah Ryan Williams on Nov. 29.

“She was my best friend and meant everything to me,” Williams’ mother, Kim Stillday, said at the sentencing hearing. “As a person, Savannah was funny. She would light up any room she walked into.”

Prosecutor James Hannemon called the shooting “a cold-blooded, brazen killing” that was unprovoked.

“She just had the great misfortune of coming across a person who valued her life so little,” he said.

Bible spoke briefly at the hearing.

“I completely apologize,” Bible said. “I feel like I do need to sit down and do some time.”

Bible told police he began to feel “suspicious” while engaged in a sex act with Williams and shot her in the head.

It was the second attack on a transgender woman near the same light-rail station in 2023. Two men pleaded guilty to severely beating a trans woman during a robbery in February 2023, although prosecutors concluded that attack was not motivated by bias. The local LGBTQ+ community was also roiled by a shooting at a mostly queer and trans punk rock show in August 2023 that left one person dead and six injured.

Nationally, the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for LGBTQ+ rights, said in an annual report in November that it has recorded the deaths of 335 transgender and gender-nonconforming victims of violence, including at least 33 deaths in the preceding 12 months. The group said the victims were “overwhelmingly young and people of color, with Black trans women disproportionately impacted.”

LGBTQ+ activists had urged prosecutors to treat Williams’ death as a hate crime, but Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Bible’s motive.

Under Minnesota law, Bible will serve about 20 years in prison and the rest of his sentence on supervised release.