A 36-year-old transgender man was shot and killed during an argument in northwest Atlanta, police said.
Police are still searching for suspects in the fatal Sunday morning shooting.
About 3 a.m., officers found Nino Fortson, who identifies as a man, with multiple gunshot wounds in the 700 block of Woods Drive, Atlanta police said. He was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he died.
“A witness at the scene said that the victim got into a verbal altercation with two males and two females,” Atlanta police officer Lisa Bender said. “During the argument, the victim pulled a small gun and fired into the air.”
The witness told police he walked away, but shortly after, he heard more gunshots and saw Fortson on the ground as one of the men in the altercation limped away.
"Our preliminary investigation did not in any way indicate that this individual identified as transgender. And we have no evidence at all that such an identification played any role in this death,” Atlanta police spokesman Carlos Campos said in a statement. “But given the issues that have been raised publicly, we have engaged our LGBT liaisons and asked them to work with our homicide unit to see if there are angles that need to be explored."
Fortson is the 10th transgender person to die in the United States this year and the first known homicide of a transgender man, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
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