Woman remembered as loving friend, positive force
Marisela Castro didn’t usually make a big deal about her birthday, but as she was set to turn 40 at the end of August, she told her friend Jorge Luis Lizardo that she wanted to have a party. Lizardo was thrilled and more than willing to accommodate.
“We were putting it together little by little, I told her we were going to have a great time because she was turning 40,” Lizardo said in Spanish.
Unfortunately, the good friends never got a chance to celebrate. Castro, a transgender woman, was killed early Friday when a man got out of a car she was in and shot her in the back as she walked down the street in the Northshore neighborhood of east Houston.
Her slaying has devastated friends and loved ones, and illustrates the unique dangers faced by transgender people who are simply trying to live their lives, advocates say. Castro is at least the 23rd transgender person to be killed in the United States in 2022, according to the Human Rights Campaign, and at least the third Texan.
Eighteen of the 22 transgender people who have been killed this year, not including Castro, were women of color, according to the HRC. The group estimates the number of people killed is actually higher, but is difficult to pin down precisely because their deaths go unreported or misreported.
“It is so sad to find out that another trans sister in Houston was murdered due to transphobia and hate against our trans community, without protection or answers from law enforcement in Houston,” said Elia Chino, founder of the Fundación Latinoamericana De Acción Social, a healthcare group that focuses on queer Latinos in Houston.
“Ni una mas (not one more). We are tired of this happening again and again to our trans sisters,” Chino said.
Houston police did not respond to Chino’s statement, but said that no one was in custody Sunday.
Castro, a Honduran immigrant who spent most of her life in North Carolina, moved to Houston several years ago to be close to her sister and her nieces and nephews, whom she loved more than anything, Lizardo said.
The pair became friends after Lizardo moved in near Castro last year and they would go out to eat together often, talking nearly every day. Trips to Starbucks, Castro’s favorite coffee shop, were common, Lizardo said.
“I’m also gay, and she told me that things could be difficult for her as a trans woman. I told her she had a friend in me, and from there we called each other brother and sister,” Lizardo said.
Castro could often be found singing songs by the Mexican American artist “Marisela,” her namesake. She kept up a bright and sunny demeanor despite the discrimination she faced working on construction sites or at businesses that would deny her service, Lizardo said.
She had no enemies, according to Lizardo, who suspects that her death was the result of another senseless hate crime.
“She was always so happy, but you know that all across the U.S. there are many that don’t like transgender people, and this is not the first time this has happened,” he said.