A transgender woman has died of wounds suffered in a shooting by a Los Angeles police officer last month in an incident that has caused much distress among her friends and advocates.

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Linda Becerra Moran called police February 7 to say she had been kidnapped and was being held against her will at a motel in the city’s Pacoima neighborhood, the Los Angeles Times reports. She was a 30-year-old immigrant from Ecuador who had engaged in sex work and had experienced homelessness, and she may have been a victim of sex trafficking.

“In her conversation with a 911 dispatcher, a distraught-sounding Becerra Moran is heard saying that a man in a different room was holding her against her will, and bringing other men into the room,” the Times reports.

Several officers came to the motel room and spoke with Becerra Moran for a few minutes. She said she had been hit over the head with a bottle, and police checked her for wounds. She became further upset when a supervisor arrived, and she told the officers to leave. “I don’t want your help,” she said, as documented on police body cam video.

Then she picked up a knife and held it toward her neck. Police told her to throw the knife down, and when she moved forward, Officer Jason Sanchez shot her. She collapsed on the bed.

She was taken to a hospital “in grave condition,” according to the Times, and died February 27 after being taken off life support. The hospital’s ethics committee approved the decision to take her off life support after trying unsuccessfully to reach members of Becerra Moran’s family in Ecuador. The Los Angeles Police Department did not report her death for nearly a week.

The Police Commission, its inspector general, and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office will investigate the shooting. The LAPD has not released further details, including whether they arrested the man Becerra Moran said was holding her captive.

Advocates for trans people, sex workers, and people experiencing homelessness are deeply concerned. “This has such chilling connotations for survivors in L.A. — if they’re afraid to call 911, if they’re afraid that police are going to shoot them when they call 911,” Soma Snakeoil, executive director of the Sidewalk Project, which assists unhoused people in Los Angeles, told the Times.

Snakeoil met Becerra Moran in L.A.’s MacArthur Park in late 2023 when warning unhoused Angelenos about a serial killer targeting them. Becerra Moran was “fleeing from sexual violence,” Snakeoil said. The Sidewalk Project found her temporary housing in motels, but she moved around frequently. There are few shelter beds in L.A. for women who have experienced sex trafficking, particularly for trans women or those with mental health issues, she said.

Kim Soriano, a researcher with the Sidewalk Project, said Becerra Moran was fiercely independent. “She was just determined to survive,” Soriano said. “She was very resilient; like she knew what she wanted and she knew what she liked and what made her comfortable.”

Leigh LaChapelle, an associate director at the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, said Becerra Moran’s death shows why police are not the best people to help survivors of trafficking. “They see them through the lens of criminality rather than vulnerability and treat them as people who need support,” LaChapelle said. “I’m so worried about this getting written off as a mistake or as a sort of exception.”