DALLAS — Editor's note: The video above is from a report on Nov. 4, 2021.
A Dallas County jury has sentenced a 24-year-old man to 37 years in prison for strangling a transgender woman to death in 2019 and dumping her body in a lake.
The jury sentenced Ruben Alvarado a day after finding him guilty of first-degree murder in the death of 26-year-old Chynal Lindsey in June 2019.
Alvarado had testified that he took the Dallas woman to White Rock Lake for sex but ordered her from his sport utility vehicle upon discovering her biological sex.
He claimed Lindsey then attacked him, so he strangled her with his belt in self-defense.
Lindsey's case - along with investigations into the killings of Tiffany Thomas, Muhlaysia Booker, Merci Mack, Coco Wortham, Kier Kartier and others - are among those putting the Dallas area at the center of national attention, over the past two years, for attacks and murders against transgender women or gender non-conforming people.
Advocates told WFAA last week that they were monitoring this trial closely.
“For the family, it’s going to provide a sense of closure as well as a sense of justice,” said Naomi Green, an advocate who also handles transgender programming for the community based nonprofit Abounding Prosperity, Inc. in Dallas.