Police in Dallas have arrested the man they believe killed three women, including Muhlaysia Booker, a 23-year-old black transgender woman.
Officials announced Wednesday that Kendrell Lavar Lyles was charged with three counts of murder after someone called in a tip to investigators.
Police did not identify the other two women Lyles is accused of killing.
The 34-year-old is also a person of interest in the death of 26-year-old Chynal Lindsey, another black transgender woman whose body was found in a lake June 1.
In recent years, there have been four unresolved murder cases in which the victim was a young, black transgender woman. Brittany White, 29, was shot to death in October. Shade Schuler, 22, was also fatally shot in 2015. In May 2018, 26-year-old Carla Patricia Flores-Pavón, a trans Latina woman, was strangled to death. In that case, police suspect a robbery and a man has been charged with her murder.
Dallas police said that after a woman died in a shooting May 22, someone called in a tip that Lyles was responsible.
Then, on May 23, officers responded to another shooting, where another witness told police that she and the suspect had gone to meet with a woman for a drug deal. When she walked up to the car, the witness said Lyles shot her and she later died.
While investigating those two murders, detectives realized that the suspect drove the same type of car — a light-colored Lincoln LS sedan — as the one that picked up Booker on May 18, said Dallas Police Maj. Max Geron. Cellphone data also showed that Lyles had allegedly been to the Spring and Lagow area, where Booker was last seen alive, and at the scene of the murder.
“We don’t know the motive for murder at this point,” Geron said.
In May, police said that there are similarities between Booker’s and White’s murders, as well as a stabbing on April 13 that the victim — a black trans woman — survived.
Investigators are also still looking for ties to another murder of a transgender woman, 27-year-old Armani Dante Morgan, whose remains were found in a field in July 2017. The Dallas County medical examiner ruled her death as “unexplained.”
CORRECTION
Armani Dante Morgan’s name was misspelled in an earlier version of this post.