The year 2026 has already given the country a string of names it should not have had to learn this way. In April, eight children were shot in Shreveport, Louisiana, allegedly by their own father, who police say also shot his wife and the mother of three of his other children. That same week in Annandale, Virginia, former Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax was determined by police to have fatally shot his wife, Dr. Cerina Fairfax, before killing himself, with their teenage children inside the house. Three women, all Black mothers, were targeted.
These were the cases that broke through. Most do not.
The numbers behind the headlines
Intimate partner violence is one of the leading causes of death for Black women in the United States, and the disparity is staggering. Between 2018 and 2021, Black women made up roughly 13.4% of the U.S. population but accounted for nearly 30% of intimate partner homicide victims — a disparity that widened during the 2020–2021 period of the pandemic. Black women are murdered at nearly three times the rate of white women, and more than four in ten Black women experience physical violence from an intimate partner at some point in their lives — a rate higher than that of white, Hispanic, Asian, and Pacific Islander women.
The geography of the crisis is uneven. In Louisiana, where some of this year’s most visible cases have unfolded, Black women make up about 16% of the state’s population but account for 24% of those killed in intimate-partner violence. One of the earliest homicide victims in New Orleans in 2026 was a 25-year-old woman named Jarriel Williams. Media reports paid no tribute to her, and her family — headed by a mother who suffered a severe head injury in the same incident — has not yet been able to hold a memorial service.
That silence is the pattern. National experts describe deaths like hers as part of a growing but largely unspoken public health crisis — sometimes called Black femicide — that feels silent because when Black women are murdered, their stories are rarely told.
Black trans women: the same crisis, intensified
For Black trans women, the same forces converge with even sharper edges. A study of 229 documented acts of fatal violence against transgender women in the U.S. found that Black transgender women accounted for 78.6% of the victims. They were significantly more likely to be fatally shot, and were killed at younger ages, than non-Black transgender women. Where perpetrators were identified, 75% were Black cisgender men — and nearly two-thirds of the Black trans women killed had a romantic or sexual relationship with their killer.
The Human Rights Campaign, which has tracked fatal anti-trans violence since 2013, has documented the same pattern year after year. Young trans women of color — particularly Black trans women — are disproportionately affected. Victims are often killed by partners, family members, and acquaintances, and guns are used in the majority of deaths. Among the most painful 2024 cases the HRC profiled was that of Brandon “Tayy Dior” Thomas, a 17-year-old Black transgender girl in Mobile, Alabama, who was shot and killed on May 7, 2024; her alleged killer, who has been arrested, was her romantic partner.
Researchers and advocates have repeatedly described what makes these relationships so dangerous. Media reports suggest cisgender male intimate partners are the primary perpetrators of fatal violence against transgender women, often killing them after discovering they were transgender or out of fear that others would find out about the relationship. Cis men who pursue trans women of color frequently refuse to be seen with them in public, on social media, or in any way that might suggest a relationship — secrecy that, when it cracks, can turn lethal.
Why “just leave” is not an answer
The most common public response to femicide — the question of why she stayed — collapses on contact with the evidence. Feminist criminologists have long identified the period of marital separation as among the most lethal for women. Research consistently shows that a woman’s risk of being killed by an intimate partner is highest in the weeks and months after she leaves or initiates a legal separation.
Leaving is also harder for Black women and trans women specifically. A profound mistrust of law enforcement, rooted in a long history of discrimination, over-policing, and police brutality, discourages Black survivors from reporting abuse — out of justified fears of being further victimized by the systems meant to help, of exacerbating legal trouble for themselves or their partner, or of police violence against either of them. Racism within healthcare, counseling, and domestic-violence services compounds the problem. For Black trans women, the barriers stack higher still: Black transgender Americans report being homeless at more than five times the rate of the general population, and household incomes under $10,000 at more than eight times the rate, conditions that trap many in dangerous relationships and dangerous work.
What the warning signs look like
Almost every case reviewed by researchers and reporters this year shows the same shape. In Shreveport and Annandale alike, these were not random eruptions of violence — they were predictable crises, and in both cases, the warning signs were visible. Court documents in the Fairfax case described a man whose mental and emotional health had been deteriorating for years, with heavy drinking, emotional withdrawal, and mounting financial and legal pressure.
Advocates point out that those signs were visible to people around the victims, too — and that the cultural script of “she should have just left” prevents intervention before it’s too late. In the aftermath of the Shreveport shooting, one survivor’s daughter described seeing people online say, “She should have just left,” and answering, “Well, it’s hard to leave.”
The cost of looking away
What makes 2026 feel like an inflection point is not that the violence is new. The disparities have been documented for decades. What is new is the accumulation — case after case, in the same months, across the same demographic — and the renewed willingness of some reporters and researchers to call it what it is: a crisis specifically targeting Black women and Black trans women, perpetrated overwhelmingly by people they knew and, in most cases, loved.
Researchers note that cases involving individuals with power, status, or public recognition are more likely to break through, while others are overlooked. Jarriel Williams’s family is still trying to bury her. Tayy Dior Thomas was seventeen. Cerina Fairfax was a doctor whose name most people only learned because her husband had been a lieutenant governor. The crisis is the same crisis. It only looks different depending on whose face it wears, and whether anyone outside the family ever learns the name.
If you or someone you know is experiencing intimate partner violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233 or by texting “START” to 88788. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) offers peer support specifically for trans people in crisis, and the Black-led Ujima Community provides culturally specific resources for Black survivors at ujimacommunity.org.
