On October 17, Daqua Lameek Ritter received a life sentence for the murder of a black transsexual woman. In February, the jury found the 26-year-old South Carolina man guilty of shooting and killing Pebbles LaDime Doe on August 4, 2019.
Ritter shot Doe three times with a.22-caliber handgun. Ritter lured Doe to a rural area some distance from her Allendale home, where he committed the murder. When Ritter’s secret connection was thought to be on the verge of becoming public knowledge, he killed her.
Ritter had been seeing Doe since one of his regular trips to see family outside of New York, according to Doe’s close acquaintances. Prosecutors were able to obtain text messages from Doe’s phone, revealing recurring fights that compelled her to delete all of their texts, even though hundreds remained from the month before her death.
Delasia Green, Ritter’s other girlfriend at the time, added to his need for concealment. Green allegedly blasted Ritter with a homophobic term after learning of his involvement with Doe.
The prosecutors sought a life sentence without parole, while Ritter’s defense attorneys demanded a ruling that would allow their client to return to the streets eventually. We will update the story as new information becomes available.
South Carolina state law enforcement’s failure to process a voluntary gunshot residue test Ritter had undergone meant that there was little to no tangible evidence pointing to the defendant. The defense also contended that the frequent automobile rides the couple took together, their close relationship, and other positive text messages between the two painted a completely different picture.
As part of their trial presentation, prosecutors displayed body camera footage from a traffic stop on the day of the murder, which captured not just Doe but also a figure in the passenger seat with a distinctive left-wrist tattoo. Officers made the stop just a few hours before they discovered Doe slumped forward in the automobile, parked in a driveway.
In police interviews, Ritter claimed he had not seen Doe on the day her body was discovered, but police body camera footage revealed that the tattoo seen during the traffic stop belonged to Ritter, confirming he was lying to police and one of the last people likely to have seen Doe that day.
In 2024, authorities sentenced Ritter’s co-defendant, Xavier Pinckney, to three years and nine months for lying to them about his knowledge of Ritter and Doe’s final interactions.
Ritter’s case is significant because it is the first guilty verdict in a trial since the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The act, signed into law in 2009, was developed in response to the 1998 murders of Shepard, a gay student in Wyoming, and Byrd, a black father of three in Texas. The legislation broadened the federal definition of hate crimes to include gender, disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
On Thursday night, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division issued the following statement: “This sentencing sends a clear message. We will utilize all available resources to protect the rights of the LGBTQI+ community, and we will investigate and prosecute perpetrators of transphobic violence in our country.
In a press release on Thursday, FBI Civil Rights Unit Supervisory Special Agent Anthony Snead, Jr. also commented on the sentence. “We want the LGBTQIA+ community to feel heard and comfortable in their own skin, as we believe that no one should face victimization for their identity.
