Light A Candle For angie

Angie’s family loved her and fully embraced her for who she was – a sister, an aunt, a daughter, a [transgender] woman.

Angie was a transgender woman – someone who lived her life as a woman but was born male.

It is a tremendous loss – to Angie’s family, to her friends, to all of Greeley – that the life of someone as loving and caring as Angie was cut short so brutally.

On April 14, 2009, the two-week trial for the murder of Angie Zapata—an 18-year-old transgender woman—is scheduled to begin in Greeley, Colo. Angie’s trial will mark the first time an anti-transgender murder will be prosecuted as a hate crime under state law in this country. Due to this landmark case’s complexities and its significance for LGBT people, it is of utmost importance that media coverage of the tragic death of Angie Zapata be inclusive, accurate, and respectful of a community that is too often targeted for harassment and violence.

Angie Zapata was brutally murdered in an attack motivated by anti-transgender bias on July 17, 2008. Allen Ray Andrade, 31, has admitted to police that he and Angie met online, that they went on a date, and that he viciously beat her to death.