Man arrested in Texas transgender woman's strangulation death
DALLAS — A 24-year-old man has been charged with murder in the strangulation death of a Dallas transgender woman. Jimmy Eugene Johnson II was arrested near Huntsville, Texas.
He was driving a car seen in surveillance video from the Dallas apartment complex where 26-year-old Carla Patricia Flores-Pavon was found dead on May 9.
A Dallas police statement issued Thursday says Johnson revealed that he had goods stolen from the woman's apartment. The police statement says there is presently no evidence of a hate crime.
CBS DFW reports that police said the motive in the case was robbery and that Pavon was not targeted for her "transgender lifestyle."
Deputy Chief Thomas Castro tells The Dallas Morning News that Johnson and Flores-Pavon had been engaging in online chats.
Johnson is confined to the Walker County Jail in Huntsville under $500,000 bond.
The Human Rights Campaign says 28 transgender Americans died in homicides in 2017 and 10 have died so far this year.