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Victim Number 17: Trans Woman of Color Murdered in Missouri

Police in Kansas City are searching for the driver who struck and then repeatedly ran over the Latina trans woman with an SUV.

By Dawn Ennis

August 18 2015 12:59 AM EDT

Tamara Dominguez of Kansas City, Mo., is the latest transgender American murdered in 2015, in a brutal killing that police have not labeled a hate crime.

Dominguez, 36, was seen by witnesses stepping out of a black Chevrolet Avalanche SUV August 15t 3 a.m., according to Kansas City TV station KCTV. Police told the station the male driver then struck her with the vehicle and ran over her body at least two more times.

Authorities, who at first classified this as an aggravated assault, are investigating the case as a homicide -– claiming it is too early on in the investigation to confirm whether the attack was a hate crime.

Although police identified Dominguez as a male, based on her legal identification, Sgt. Kari Thompson of the Kansas City Police Department emailed The Advocate the official report, including her chosen name.

“I don’t think it’s fair somebody dies like this no matter what the problem was, what happened. Nobody has the right to kill someone,” her roommate Juan Rendon told KSBH.

Friends and family laid flowers at the scene of the crime, near the parking lot of a church, in her memory.

A friend of Dominguez's, Juan Rendon, translated a message of forgiveness from her Spanish-speaking brother, Alberto, who was in tears.

"He just wants to say to the person that did that to her, that he would forgive them for what he did to her, and he hopes that he can forget what he did. We are not here to judge nobody, and he hopes that person really feels bad for what her did."

Family members told KCTV they didn't know who Dominguez may have been with in the Avalanche, and that the vehicle wasn 't familiar. Police are searching for clues to the identity of the driver and the SUV.

Her murder brings to 17 the number of transgender Americans killed this year, all of them women, most of them women of color.

Three African-American trans women were reported murdered just in the past few days. The Advocate has compiled the latest information on the previous 16 women murdered, and you can read about them here.

Anyone with information about the Dominguez case is asked to call the KCPD's TIPS hotline at 816-474-TIPS (8477).

Watch KCTV's report on the murder of Tamara Dominguez below.

KCTV5