Remembering Our Dead

TDoR 2023 / 2023 / April / 19 / Rasheeda Williams ("Koko Da Doll")

Rasheeda Williams ("Koko Da Doll")

Age 35

19 Apr 2023
Atlanta, Georgia (USA)
Shot

TDoR list ref: tgeu/tdor2023/19-Apr-2023/Rasheeda Williams ("Koko Da Doll")

Rasheeda was shot. She was one of the four subjects of the D. Smith documentary "Kokomo City", and a rapper who had released two singles.

Rasheeda Williams, a Black trans woman and performing artist better known by her stage names Koko Da Doll and Hollywood Koko, was shot and killed in Atlanta, GA on Wednesday night. She was 35 years old.

According to reporting in Gaye Magazine, Atlanta police have confirmed that a person was shot on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. SW and Hamilton E. Holmes NW late Wednesday. Police sources did not confirm Williams’ identity, but friends and family stated that she was the victim in social media posts obtained by the magazine. No details about the killing have been made public at this time.

Williams’ violent death was also confirmed in an Instagram post by LGBTQ+ advocate Daniella Carter, with whom Williams starred in filmmaker D. Smith’s latest documentary Kokomo City. “I’m truly at a lost of words and in deep pain,” Carter wrote, sharing an image of Williams on the red carpet at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

In addition to being a trans sex worker, which she discussed at length in Kokomo City, Williams was a rapper, releasing her first single “Trick” in 2020 followed by 2022’s “Bulletproof.” She was also working on new music, as she teased in a vlog last year.

“Koko had a heart of gold and spread nothing but love and light to those she came across,” Williams’ family wrote in the description of their GoFundMe campaign to pay for funeral costs. “To know Koko is to love her, she loved her family and friends to the core of her heart.” At time of writing, the campaign had raised roughly half of its $15,000 goal.

Williams’ death marks at least the tenth violent killing of a trans person in the U.S. this year, per numbers maintained by Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents. Her murder comes less than two weeks after Ashley Burton was also shot to death in Atlanta. No arrests in that case have been made public. And in January, Georgia state police shot nonbinary activist Tortuguita — who was protesting the development of a police training facility colloquially called “Cop City” — at least 57 times.

Jermarcus Jernigan, 17, was subsequently arrested in connection with her murder.

ATLANTA — Atlanta police have arrested and charged a 17-year-old in the shooting death of a transgender woman last week.

Police said they responded to 2400 block of Martin Luther King Drive in Southwest Atlanta on April 18 to a person shot call. When they arrived, they found Koko Williams dead from a gunshot wound.

Officials say 17-year-old Jermarcus Jernigan turned himself in to police yesterday and he was taken to the Fulton County Jail.

Jernigan has been charged with murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

The trailer for Kokomo City was released in early August 2023.