DALLAS — Three-and-a-half years of pent-up rage poured from Stephanie Houston on a Dallas criminal court witness stand Thursday morning.
Part of that rage fueled by the fact her transgender daughter's killer does not face the death penalty... at least not yet.
"Damn you," Houston yelled at Kendrell Lavar Lyles during the victim impact statement portion of his murder trial. "Nothing but hell and death is going to come to you!"
In May 2019, Muhlaysia Booker was found lying facedown in the street in the 7200 block of Valley Glen Drive around 6:44 a.m. Police said she was killed, and officers linked Lyles to Booker's death about a month later. Police said Booker had no identification, nor her cellphone, when her body was found. Investigators searched for her phone records and found that Booker's phone was still active several hours after her death, an arrest warrant said.
Lyles' phone records showed that his phone was in the same area of Booker's phone, according to the warrant. He was also at the time driving a light-colored Lincoln LS that matched the description of the vehicle Booker was seen getting into before her death, the warrant says.
About a month earlier, Booker had been brutally assaulted outside of an apartment complex in Oak Cliff. Video of the assault went viral, leading to widespread calls for justice for Booker among Dallas activists.
On Thursday morning, only partial justice is what Stephanie Houston believes Booker received. Lyles agreed to plead guilty and was sentenced to 48 years in prison.
"You are the devil," Houston said on the witness stand. "And you have no victory here. Your reign is over devil," she said to Lyles who watched stoically, a PPE mask covering his face.
"And no matter her being trans, he had no right to take her life. He had no right," Houston said outside the courtroom. "And as my baby is dead, he will reap what he sow."
As for what he might reap next, Lyles is facing two additional murder charges in Collin County for the deaths of Leticia Grant, 35, and Kenneth Cichocki, 29, according to court records.
Grant was found shot in the head on May 22, 2019, in a parking lot in the 7800 block of McCallum Boulevard. She remained in grave condition until she died days later. Arrest records showed a witness contacted investigators, saying she knew Lyles had killed Grant.
After seeing on social media that Grant had died, the witness said she was contacted by another woman who heard Lyles say he shot Grant. When the first woman asked Lyles about it, he denied it but then said he was in the area when Grant was killed, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Cellphone records showed that Lyles and Grant were in communication around the time of the shooting. The records also show Lyles' cellphone was in the area of the shooting.
The day after Grant was shot, police said Cichocki was found shot in an AutoZone parking lot in the 17500 block of Coit Road. Cichocki died on May 29, 2019.
"We wanted a more harsher capital punishment crime," said Ahmad Goree of the sentence for the death of Muhlaysia Booker. "But we got what we got and we hope that it sends a message that trans lives matter, and that those who decide to do harm to this community will face justice."
Goree is the board president of the Muhlaysia Booker Foundation, the nonprofit started in her name to support transgender women and protect them from homelessness and acts of violence. In the year before Booker's murder, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation tracked 26 transgender deaths in the U.S., and the majority were Black transgender women.
"But I want to change that narrative," Houston said. "I want them to know they can live healthy long lives."
And that's where a grieving mom will funnel her grief and rage now – to save someone else in her daughter's name.
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