Transgender woman who escaped Alabama for her safety beaten & left for dead near National Mall in D.C.

In the dark hours before dawn on June 29, Cayla Calhoun lay unconscious and bleeding near the National Mall, her skirt torn and soaked in blood, her body battered almost beyond recognition. She had come to Washington, D.C., in January, hoping for safety. Instead, three men on scooters surrounded her, shouted anti-trans slurs, and beat her, leaving her for dead.

“I was living in Alabama, and it was becoming unsafe as a transgender person,” Calhoun, 43, said. “So I moved to D.C. because I thought it would be safer. Oh, no.”

She grinned. “Honestly, it crossed my mind maybe I need to reach out to Alanis Morissette in case she ever wants to do another version of ‘Ironic.’”

It had begun as an ordinary Saturday night. Calhoun, a sommelier and bartender at Annabelle restaurant, finished a late shift, changed into a skirt and rainbow pin, and left her work clothes behind. Around 12:45 a.m., she stepped into Golden Age, a bar about a block from Annabelle, for a quick beer.

Then she climbed onto her Onewheel electric board and set off through Georgetown, heading along Rock Creek Parkway. She remembers navigating a detour near Filomena, a well-known Italian restaurant in Georgetown, riding past the Kennedy Center, and emerging from a tunnel where the Washington Monument glowed in the humid summer darkness.

Then, as she moved closer toward the National Mall from the Lincoln Memorial, three men on scooters appeared out of the shadows. “They began verbally assaulting me,” Calhoun recalled. “They called me slurs. You know, as queer people, we’ve all dealt with that.”

She tried to ride away. But the men followed. “Somehow they pushed me off my Onewheel,” she said. “I remember falling into a tree and scraping up my knee and my elbow. But I gathered my Onewheel and tried to get away.”

Cayla Calhoun riding her Onewheel in Washington, DCCourtesy Cayla Calhoun

It wasn’t enough.

“I don’t know how long it went on,” she said. “But I know there was a point where I was pushed off again. I remember thinking in my head, ‘I have to get away. This isn’t somebody making fun of me anymore. I have to get away.” That was the last thing she remembered.

According to a Metropolitan Police Department incident report obtained by The Advocate, Calhoun was discovered by emergency medical responders on the curb near 19th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Initially confused, she told EMTs she had fallen off her skateboard several times that day, the report states. She later reported to police that she remembered being attacked by three men about three-quarters of a mile from where EMTs found her.

The police report states that the attackers used hate- and bias-related slurs, leading Calhoun to believe she was targeted for her gender identity. The document notes that her injuries were mostly on the right side of her body.

Emergency crews found her around 6 a.m. and rushed her to George Washington University Hospital.

Her injuries were devastating: a concussion, multiple broken ribs, a fractured vertebra, a shattered elbow, seven fractures around her eye socket, a broken palate, and a fractured femur. Sixty percent of her body was bruised, some of it in fingerprint-shaped marks around her neck, evidence, she said, that she’d likely been strangled.

Cayla Calhoun after being assaultedCourtesy Cayla Calhoun

Even as a child, Calhoun had known who she was.

Growing up in upstate New York, the daughter of a minister, she remembers her family’s weekly grocery trips into town. When she was four or five, she began pretending to be sick so she could stay home alone.

“I’d go to my sister’s room and look through her dresses,” she said. “I’d pick the cutest one, get some stockings, put them on, find my sister’s makeup, and put on some lipstick and eye shadow. I’m sure it looked ridiculous as a five-year-old. But I felt more like me in those moments than I ever felt at any other time.”

That sense of self never left her. But being herself nearly cost her her life.

When Calhoun woke up in the hospital, she said her skirt was shredded and bloody. Many of her belongings had been thrown away by hospital staff who, she suspects, mistook her for a homeless person.

“By the time police realized who I was, a lot of that initial evidence was gone,” she said.

Detectives visited her hospital bed four days later. “They said they were there on orders from the District 1 commander,” she said. “I was still foggy. I can’t remember every detail.” She says she hasn’t heard from the police since.

An MPD spokesperson told The Advocate that the case is being investigated “as potentially being motivated by hate or bias.”

Friends and strangers have rallied around Calhoun. Ellen Vaughn, a friend of Calhoun’s roommate, launched a GoFundMe fundraiser that has raised more than $19,000 as of Monday afternoon.

“Though her attackers tried to crush her body, they could not crush her spirit,” Vaughn wrote.

Calhoun’s reach has extended well beyond the capital. Nick Craig, of Brix Cheese Shop & Wine Bar in Iowa City, Iowa, posted online about the attack, describing Calhoun as part of a tight-knit wine and hospitality community.

“Cayla is part of my community, which, if you’re reading this, means she is part of yours,” Craig wrote. “While we have never met in person, we are colleagues connected through the wonderful world of wine and hospitality. I have had the privilege of witnessing her professionalism, passion, humor and strength for many years as a member of a special social media group for people like her and me — regular folks who love wine so much we make it part of who we are and use it to build the community around us.”

Calhoun said the attack has brought one unexpected gift: her parents finally acknowledged her identity.

“Last week was the first time in my life that my parents referred to me as Cayla or used my pronouns correctly,” she said. “It’s because of this.”

Physically, Calhoun faces a long recovery.

“Fine motor skills are horrible,” she said. “I’m like a two-year-old trying to use a really small iPhone. Grabbing things, picking things up, trying to drink or eat — it’s very arduous right now.”

Emotionally, she hovers between spiritual insight and deep fear.

“Part of me, spiritually, I’m awake. I’m as awake as I’ve ever been. But emotionally, I don’t know what it looks like,” she said. “As a sommelier, a server, a bartender, I can count on two hands how many times a week I hear right-wing people at my table talking about trans people. I don’t know how that’s going to work in the future.”

And she firmly believes the current political climate is fueling attacks like hers.

“Absolutely,” she said. “The narrative that has been written by the Republicans and by people like Donald Trump, the talking points, the sleight-of-hand disinformation, using blanket words to refer to a very specific class of people, it’s all deliberate.”

Cayla CalhounCourtesy Cayla Calhoun

While recovering, Calhoun is working on a book about hospitality, a blend of personal memoir and the teachings of Ram Dass and Thomas Merton. Dass was a spiritual teacher known for blending Eastern philosophy with Western psychology, while Merton was a Trappist monk and prolific writer whose works explored contemplation, social justice, and interfaith dialogue.

“One thing that’s been really prevalent in my head recently is the dichotomy between fear and love,” she said. “Even at work, how you treat your assistant who doesn’t speak English. People are mean because they’re afraid. Then they get bad help, then they’re mad. It’s an endless cycle.”

She believes the same fear fuels anti-trans violence.

“I’ve had friends tell me, ‘If you find them, let me know, I’ll kill them.’ I understand that perspective, but that’s living out of fear,” she said. “Especially as a trans person, I’d be so far from who I am if I’d spent my life living out of fear. When we live out of love, it’s different. Unfamiliar things aren’t dangerous anymore.”

Still, she accepts reality.

“This could be a tragedy, and it is a tragedy. It will be eight weeks before I’m able to work again. It’s terrifying,” Calhoun said. “But I hope it leads to people learning to be themselves, and other people learning to accept people for being themselves. That makes the load just a little lighter.”

Calhoun keeps thinking of another trans woman. One week after her attack, almost to the hour, 28-year-old Dream Johnson was shot and killed in Northeast D.C.

“Dream was dead a week to the day, 20 minutes difference in time,” Calhoun said. “She’s dead, and I’m not. It hurts.”

Johnson’s murder remains under investigation. Police are offering a $25,000 reward for information.

According to MPD data, there had been nine reported hate crimes motivated by bias against gender identity or expression before July 1, a decrease from 15 during the same period last year. But advocates warn many attacks go unreported.

The Advocate has contacted D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office for comment. D.C. Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Lindsey Appiah said in a statement, “There is nothing more important than our continued efforts to drive down crime and make our city safer for all of our residents and visitors. While gender identity/expression bias-related crimes are down in the District when compared with 2024, we know there is still work to be done so long as anyone is victimized in our city.” She confirmed that the Metropolitan Police Department is investigating the incident involving Calhoun.

“It’s not an accident that we’re seeing a rise in violence against transgender humans. It’s part of a right-wing plan,” Calhoun said. “They’re not doing anything to help the American people, but the things that help them force their agenda, they’re certainly adept at.”

Calhoun, who began publicly presenting as feminine in 2015 and came out as transgender in early 2023, refuses to hide.

“I hope through this situation that some people see humanity,” she said. “And if it all gets some people to see, then it’s a little better.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include comments from D.C. Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Lindsey Appiah.

This article originally appeared on Advocate: Transgender woman who escaped Alabama for her safety beaten & left for dead near National Mall in D.C.

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