Nona Conner (L) gives Desiree Copeland (R) a check with the first installment of crowdfunded money after she was attacked. (Photo by Jessica Raven)

After a transgender woman of color was attacked and injured in Southwest D.C. on July 2, members of the community have raised thousands of dollars toward her recovery.

Desiree Copeland was walking to visit members of her family near the boundary between the Navy Yard and Waterfront neighborhoods when she says a young man started walking behind her.

He shot off a Roman candle firework in her direction, hitting her, according to the Metropolitan Police Department report. Copeland asked him to stop, but he continued to shoot the fireworks, resulting in burns on her neck and face.

Copeland says when she asked him to stop, he said, “I can do whatever I want,” and called her derogatory names.

She says she was able to ditch him when she approached her mother’s house. Finding that her mother wasn’t home, she heading back, crossing paths with the young man again.

“He started doing the same thing,” says Copeland. “By this time, I really felt offended and had to defend myself.”

When she started to approach the suspect, who appeared to be a teenager, he ran away, only to return and charge at her with a metal bat in his hand. The suspect struck her repeatedly with the bat, and she fell to the ground. The police report says that he, along with one other suspect, began kicking her. Copeland says the group that jumped her was much larger, closer to eight or ten people.

Copeland called the police, who arrived shortly before 9:30 p.m. She went to the hospital with a “head gushing with blood,” and received four stitches.

On July 4, officers arrested Tracy Darnell Vandyke Jr., 23, and charged him with simple assault for allegedly kicking Copeland. The investigation into the incident is ongoing and it is not being investigated as a hate crime, according to MPD spokesperson Aquita Brown.

Copeland says that, on Thursday morning, an MPD detective told her that the first attacker would not be charged because, “in the video, it seemed like I was the aggressor. He assaulted me first. Does the video also show him shooting me with a Roman candle?”

MPD spokesperson Hugh Carew declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation. However, MPD did comment on Twitter, “MPD doesn’t make that call [to prosecute]-made by [U.S. Attorney’s Office] and/or [Office of the Attorney General]. 1 person being charged. Video evidence played big role. We are here to help everyone!”

Copeland says that news frustrates her. “I feel like thats teaching the juvenile he can go around doing whatever he wants to individuals and just get away with it.”

She’s also dealing with her physical injuries. “Her face is swollen—she has cuts and bruises and stitches,” says Nona Conner, a program manager with Collective Action for Safe Spaces and another trans woman of color in D.C. She saw Copeland shortly after the attack.

Copeland is a participant in the Safe Bars Collective, a program run by CASS and the Restaurant Opportunities Center to help transgender people of color find employment.

For Conner, seeing Copeland in that condition “brings back unwanted memories” because she too has been attacked. In 2013, Conner was stabbed more than 48 times in Southeast. “This is an issue that came back to haunt me,” she says. Talking about it still makes her tear up. “It always seems like we’re being targeted because of people making it not okay for us to be in existence.”

Indeed, transgender women of color face outsized risk of physical violence. 2016 marked the most deaths ever recorded of transgender people in the U.S. due to fatal violence. So far in 2017, there have already been 15 reported murders of transgender people in the U.S.—most recently Ebony Morgan, shot to death on July 2 in Lynchburg, Va.

Almost exactly a year before Copeland was attacked, 22-year-old Dee Dee Dodds was shot and killed in Northeast on the 4th of July. Four people have been arrested in her murder, which police say was a botched robbery rather than a hate crime. She was the first transgender murder victim in the District since 2012.

Members of the D.C. community are reaching out to help Copeland. The day after the attack, a CASS volunteer set up a crowdfunding page to raise $2,000 for her. Already, 70 donors have raised more than $2,900.

“100 percent of the funds are going to her,” says Sarah Doyel, who set up the page.

Conner gave Copeland the first check from the fundraising page on July 5.

“I was actually surprised,” says Copeland. “I didn’t think that many people would be willing to be concerned and to help out someone like me.”

She used some of that money to purchase a cell phone and says she’s opening a bank account. “I want to save it and just try to get my own place that is safe.”

Updated to include more information about the police investigation into the first suspect.