Dylan Gurley, a transgender woman from Little Elm, Texas, was just weeks away from her 21st birthday when police found her unconscious in a home in Denton, Texas, late last month.
According to the Fort Worth Star-TelegraphPolice arrived at the home shortly after 11 p.m. on July 23 and found Gurly with “traumatic injuries.” Gurley was taken to Medical City Denton, where she died about 40 minutes later. Tarant County Medical Examiner’s records indicate the cause of death was “blunt and sharp force trauma with strangulation.”
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People who knew Gurley told the Denton Record Chronicle that she was homeless at the time of her senseless, premature death. Little else was reported about the murder, but police told the Fort Worth Star-Telegraph on August 1 that the investigation is ongoing. No arrests or suspects have been reported. Police are asking anyone with information about the crime to call 940-349-7977 or report tips anonymously at DentonCountyCrimeStoppers.com.
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An online obituary lists Gurley’s mother and father, stepparents, grandparents, three sisters and three brothers, as well as numerous other family members and friends as her surviving relatives.
Gurley’s sister, Senica Ciarallo, has started a GoFundMe campaign asking for donations to help the family “give Dylan the memorial she wanted and deserved.” Ciarallo wrote that the family hopes to purchase urns and bracelets or necklaces for Gurley’s ashes. They are also planning an event to mark what would have been Gurley’s 21st birthday on Aug. 18.
“We are just trying to put the pieces back together as best we can and appreciate any help,” Ciarallo wrote.
Accordingly Pittsburgh Lesbian CorrespondentsGurley is one of 24 trans and gender-expansive people killed by violence in the United States this year, and one of four killed in July alone. But as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) frequently notes, the violent deaths of trans and gender nonconforming people often go unreported, and victims are often misidentified and misgendered by police, so this may be just a snapshot of the violence inflicted on the trans community. According to the HRC, Gurley was misnamed in some media reports, and the Tarant Country medical examiner’s case files list her gender as “male.”
End of last month Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents reported that it has tracked the violent deaths of more than 35 transgender people ages 21 and younger since 2020.
Additionally, Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for HRC’s Transgender Justice Initiative, noted that Gurley is at least the fifth transgender person murdered while homeless in 2024. “Tragically, this is not a coincidence,” Cooper wrote in a statement. “Studies show that 30% of transgender people have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives, further exposing them to vulnerability and lethal violence.”
In its statement remembering Gurley, the HRC also noted that Texas has had more murders of transgender people than any other U.S. state. Gurley’s killing is the 36th murder of a trans person in the state since the LGBTQ+ advocacy group began tracking fatal violence against trans people in 2013. All but one of those 36 victims were trans women.
“Dylan had a right to safety while she was alive,” wrote Cooper of the HRC, “and now she has a right to justice.”
