Transgender Violence: California Man Given Nearly 13-Year Prison Term For Killing Trans Woman

A California man has been sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison for stabbing and killing his transgender domestic partner. Ezekiel Jamal Dear learned his fate Thursday after being charged with voluntary manslaughter and arson last year, according to a news release from the Los Angeles County District Attorney.

Dear, 27, was convicted Oct. 19 for the crimes committed on Jan. 31, 2015 in Van Nuys.

That day, his former partner Yasmin Vash Payne was discovered by firefighters who were responding to a blaze at the apartment the couple shared. The 33-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene after she sustained multiple stabbing wounds to her torso. Dear turned himself into the Los Angeles Police Department the following day and was held on $1.27 million bail after being charged, ABC News reported at the time.

In a Los Angeles Times profile of Payne, coroners identified the victim as a 33-year-old male named Michael Vash Payne. Payne went by the name Yasmin and identified as a woman.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge at the Van Nuys Courthouse sentenced Dear Thursday to a 12-year-and-eight-month prison term for stabbing Payne "several times" before proceeding to set their apartment bedroom on fire, the Times reported. It was not immediately clear why Dear attacked Payne.

Millions of people suffer every year from the abuse of an intimate companion, and transgender Americans are particularly at risk, according to the Williams Institute, a gender and sexuality research center.

On average, about 20 people are physically abused by their partners in the U.S. per minute, according to a 2015 list of statistics from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Nearly half of all intimate partner homicides are committed by dating partners.

Breaking it down even further, a separate study from 2013 conducted by the Anti-Violence Project revealed that 72 percent of victims of hate violence homicides were transgender women. Sixty-seven percent of those homicide victims were transgender women of color.