POSTED: AUGUST 13, 2009
Gone Too Soon: The Lateisha Green Story
As Told to Wendy L. Wilson
http://www.essence.com/news_entertainment/news/articles/mother_of_shooting_victim_latisha_green/?Page=1Halloween used to be Moses Cannon's favorite holiday growing up. It was the one time during the year when no one would make a big deal about him dressing up like a girl. When Moses was 16 years old, he dressed up in girl's clothing, as he did for the last few years, except this time, he wasn't looking back. That year, Moses Cannon became Lateisha Green and transitioned from male to female.
Lateisha wasn't a cross-dresser. She lived her life freely as a female, a decision her mother, Roxanne Greene, admittedly had a hard time accepting because she knew that her child was unprepared to face society's ugly ignorance. What happened on November 14, 2008, was Roxanne's greatest fear. While 22-year-old Lateisha and her 18-year-old brother Mark sat in a car in Syracuse, New York, Dwight DeLee, 20, shot them both. Mark survived but Lateisha died. DeLee has been charged with murder in the second degree as a hate crime and was recently convicted of shooting Lateisha for no other reason than believing she was gay. This is only the second hate crime conviction involving the murder of a transgendered person in United States history.
