Washington, D.C. police are investigating an incident in which a 43-year-old transgender woman says she was attacked and assaulted by three men around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, June 29, as she was riding her battery powered scooter near the Lincoln Memorial.
District resident Cayla Calhoun, a popular bartender and sommelier at the D.C. restaurant Annabelle, told the Washington Blade she is struggling to recall the details and possible multiple locations of the attack due to the severe head injuries she has suffered.
A police report says Calhoun was found lying on a curb at the intersection of 19th Street and Constitution Avenue around 6 a.m. on June 29.
A GoFundMe appeal posted by her friend Ellen Vaughn, which reports Calhoun was found semiconscious at that time and taken to George Washington University Hospital, says her injuries include two concussions, multiple broken ribs, seven cranial fractures, and a fractured elbow.
The police report says Calhoun called for an ambulance at the 19th and Constitution Avenue location and told the emergency medical technicians who arrived at the scene that her injuries were caused by her falling off of her skateboard multiple times.
The police report says three days later, on July 3, while at the hospital, Calhoun told police “that she now remembered being assaulted by three males at 19th and I Street, N.W.,“about three quarters of a mile from where the ambulance technicians found her on Constitution Avenue.
Calhoun told the Blade she believes her memory was faulty at the time she first spoke with the ambulance technicians and police due to her head injuries. She said she is now beginning to recall that the three male attackers, whom she describes as white males, first approached her as she was riding her scooter near the Reflecting Pool close to the Lincoln Memorial.
She said the incident occurred while she was taking her routine after-work scooter ride shortly after she completed her bartending shift at Annabelle at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 28. She said her sometimes daily after-work scooter ride, which she took on the night of the attack, involves traveling along a bike path on the Rock Creek Parkway past the Kennedy Center to the Lincoln Memorial.
From the Lincoln Memorial she rides along the Reflecting Pool toward the Washington Monument, around which she circles before starting her ride home, heading north on 15th Street to her residence at 15th and R Street, N.W.
She said that on the night of the attack she now recalls passing three men who were also on scooters somewhere near the Lincoln Memorial and the reflecting pool.
“As I passed them, they yelled faggot and pedophile at me,” she told the Blade. “I was pulling onto the area there by the reflecting pond. And I figured I would ride right away.”
As best she recalls, the men followed her “and pushed me off my scooter and continued to yell slurs.” She said she recalls trying to ride away from the men and that her interaction with them may have continued in other nearby locations. But due to her head injuries she said she does not recall being assaulted by the attackers, although the multiple injuries to her head and body convinced her they had to have struck her in some way multiple times.
“I have a space where I can see myself in that moment thinking to myself this is not good,” she said. “Somebody is making fun of you. You need to go as fast as you can and you need to find people. And that’s the last thought that I remember happening until the hospital.”
The D.C. police report lists the incident as an Aggravated Assault and identifies the weapon as “hands/feet.” The report lists the suspected motive as “Hate-Bias” based on the victim’s “Gender identity — anti-transgender/transsexual.”
A D.C. police spokesperson said the case remains under active investigation and that anyone with information about the case should contact police at 202-727-9099.
The attack against Johnson took place six days before another D.C. transgender woman, Dream Johnson, 28, was shot to death around 12:30 a.m. on July 5 in front of an apartment building at 2013 Benning Rd., N.E., according to a D.C. police report.
Police have yet to identify a motive in that case. But one of Johnson’s family members, her aunt, has said she learned through someone who spoke to a witness to the shooting that three men had approached Johnson while she was walking along Benning Road and one of them called her a derogatory name before one of them shot her multiple times.
Police are offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the murder. Anyone with information about this case is being asked to contact Homicide Detective Natasha Kennedy, the lead investigator, at 202-380-6198.
Local transgender rights advocate Earline Budd said close to 100 people turned out for a candlelight vigil held in Johnson’s honor on Saturday, July 12, at D.C.’s River Terrace Park. Among those who spoke at the vigil were Japer Bowles, director of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
Further details about the Cayla Calhoun case can be accessed through her friend’s GoFundMe appeal.
Washington Blade courtesy of the National LGBTQ Media Association.
