Editor’s note: The original December 2022 version of this article was lost, and no archived copy of its text survives. The Lee Daily Register rebuilt it in October 2026 from the statements and reporting cited below, and added what happened afterward.
Philadelphia police and the District Attorney’s Office are asking for the public’s help in solving the killing of Diamond Jackson-McDonald, a 27-year-old transgender woman who was shot and killed inside her mother’s apartment in Germantown early on Thanksgiving Day.
She was shot just after midnight on Nov. 24 in the apartment on the 400 block of Manheim Street, near Morris Street, and was pronounced dead at the scene at 12:17 a.m., PhillyVoice reported. Investigators said the apartment door was open and there were no obvious signs of forced entry, according to a statement from the District Attorney’s Office.
What investigators have said
Police have not released information about any suspects, and no arrests have been made, NBC10 reported. Investigators had not determined whether the shooting was a hate crime and were considering all possibilities, PhillyVoice reported. District Attorney Larry Krasner said the person responsible could have been someone she knew. Bullet casings, cellphones and other items recovered by investigators were being tested forensically.
Krasner spoke at a news conference on Thursday, Dec. 1, alongside her family and members of Philadelphia’s LGBTQ+ community. “We are here to say her name: Diamond Jackson-McDonald,” he said, according to NBC10. His office said she was the 35th transgender or gender-nonconforming person killed by violence in the United States in 2022.
A mother’s call for justice
Her mother, Linda Jackson, described Diamond as her rock and said the family would not rest until there was justice, the District Attorney’s Office said. Celena Morrison, executive director of the city’s Office of LGBT Affairs, called the death devastating and said violence against transgender people remained an epidemic, PhillyVoice reported. Tatyana K. Woodard of the Mazzoni Center said she first met Jackson-McDonald about four years earlier at a candlelight march.
Anyone with information can call 911 or the Philadelphia police tip line at 215-686-TIPS (8477). Tips can be left anonymously.
What happened next
Krasner said it was too soon to say whether the killing was a bias crime but that the possibility was being actively investigated, the Philadelphia Gay News reported on Dec. 6, 2022. He also called for a state red flag law and a state law barring discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. The Human Rights Campaign wrote that loved ones remembered her as devoted to her family.
On March 15, 2023, Krasner again asked the public for help identifying a suspect in what NBC10 called the unsolved murder. Her family joined the appeal, according to the District Attorney’s Office. In April 2023, after an arrest in a separate Philadelphia killing, The Advocate noted that her case remained unsolved.
As of October 2026, The Lee Daily Register found no published report of an arrest or charges in her death.
