The summer heat of southeast Texas did not deter the grieving crowd that filled the Montrose Center on Tuesday evening. Houston’s LGBTQ+ community, alongside local allies, gathered for a candlelight vigil to honor the life of Persia Amarra Conway, a 33-year-old transgender woman whose body was discovered near the Brays Bayou waterway on the morning of May 25. The gathering, organized in part to process collective grief, also served as a sharp demand for answers from the Houston Police Department, which has faced mounting criticism for its lack of public updates and its failure to formally identify Conway. Instead, her identity was brought to light by her family.
Conway was found naked near the waterway, a detail that led Houston Chronicle reporters to note that detectives suspect her clothes may have been deliberately removed to destroy evidence. In the face of this horrific violence, Conway’s mother, Michelle P. Simmons, took to social media to break the silence and celebrate her daughter’s memory, offering a gut-wrenching tribute that was echoed by organizers throughout the evening. In a longform post shared online, Simmons wrote:
“Most people may not know this, but I am the proud mother of a beautiful transgender daughter, Persia Amarra Conway. A few days ago, my world changed forever. A monster in Houston, Texas, took my baby’s life. Persia was a light, a force, someone who could walk into a room and leave it brighter than she found it. Now the anger has surfaced. Don’t worry baby girl you have a tribe of prayer warriors praying for the monster to be revealed. Your death will not be in vain.”
The vigil arrives at a painful time for Houston, coming at the very start of Pride Month. Local organizers noted that the city’s main Pride festivities had been shifted earlier into June to avoid conflicting with the upcoming FIFA World Cup events. Yet, instead of launching straight into celebration, the community had to pivot to mourning. The tragedy fits into a deeply disturbing national trend; Conway is one of at least seven transgender individuals killed in the United States over the course of just three months, following closely on the heels of the May 17 stabbing of Eryka Caldwell, another transgender woman of color, in Brooklyn.
Advocacy groups in Houston emphasized that the intersection of race and gender identity continues to make transgender women of color the primary targets of fatal violence. During the event, community leaders reflected on the heavy emotional toll of carrying this systemic burden. Representatives from the Montrose Center, a vital community hub hosting the event, shared a poignant statement summarizing the urgency of the moment:
“Violence against transgender women, especially trans women of color, continues at unacceptable rates, and no one should carry that grief alone. Her mother promised to speak her name. So will we.”
This sentiment of protective solidarity was shared by the Greater Houston LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce, which used its platform to signal that the crisis cannot be ignored by the broader public. On the first official day of Pride, the Chamber issued a call to action on social media, writing:
“The violence facing transgender women, particularly Black and Brown trans women, is a crisis that demands our attention, our voices, and our collective care.”
As the candles flickered out at the Montrose Center, attendees left behind a community unified by grief but fortified by anger. With no suspects in custody and no official statements from investigators, the “tribe of prayer warriors” promised by Conway’s mother remains committed to keeping her story alive, ensuring that Houston does not forget the vibrant life that was stolen.
