Kendrell Lavar Lyles, 37, will be sentenced to 48 years in prison after pleading guilty early today (Monday, Nov. 6) to the May 18, 2019, murder of transgender woman Muhlaysia Booker.
Jury selection was set to begin this morning in Judge Carter Thompson’s courtroom in Lyles’ trial on murder charges in connection with Booker’s death. Instead, Lyles entered a guilty plea. According to the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, victim’s impact statements will be held Thursday.
Lyle is also facing two murder charges out of Collin County in the deaths Leticia Grant and Kenneth Cichochki.
Booker’s mother Stephanie Houston, founder of the Muhlaysia Booker Foundation, said in a written statement, “No amount of time can bring Muhlaysia back, and although we wish the sentence was capital punishment, our family can finally have some sense of closure knowing that justice was served and he can’t cause any more families hurt and pain.”
Ahmad Goree, president of the board for Muhlaysia Booker Foundation, added, “We hope this sentence sends a message that trans lives matter and those who decide to do this community harm will face justice. Thank you to the Dallas Police Department and their detectives for solving the case so quickly and Dallas County District Attorney’s Office for their work to bring this case to a close.”
Booker’s murder made headlines around the country because she had made national headlines a month earlier after a video went viral that showed a crowd of onlookers laughing and cheering as she was beaten following a fender-bender in a South Dallas apartment complex parking lot.
Booker was found, laying face down, in the 7200 block of Valley Glenn Drive in East Dallas, at about 6:44 a.m. Saturday, May 18, 2019. Lyles was linked to her death about a month later after a witness reported seeing Booker get into a vehicle shortly before her death that matched the description of Lyle’s vehicle. In addition, Booker’s phone and ID were missing when her body was found, and investigators searching her phone records later discovered that her phone remained active for several hours after her death, and that her phone could be tracked to the same location as Lyle’s phone during those hours.
At the time of her death, Booker was the fourth trans woman — all of them Black — to be murdered that year. At least 27 trans people were murdered overall in 2019, and in the four-plus years since Booker died, at least 192 transgender/gender nonconforming individuals have been murdered in the United States.
— Tammye Nash
