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This Sailor Stabbed A Transgender Nurse 190 Times. Now He's Going Away For 48 Years

Dwanya Hickerson claims he "lost it" after discovering Dee Whigham's gender identity.

A former sailor has been sentenced to nearly 50 years in prison for the gruesome murder of a Mississippi trans woman.

Dwanya Hickerson, 23, pleaded guilty Thursday to killing of 25-year-old nurse Dee Whigham last June. Autopsy results showed her throat had been slashed and her face and body stabbed a total of 190 times. Her body was found in a hotel room shower.

Hickerson, who was studying to be a weather forecaster, was sentenced to 40 years for the murder, plus another eight years for robbery. (He took Whigham's purse and cell phone). He won't be eligible for parole until 2068.

Initially, Hickerson claimed he was innocent, but changed his plea as part of a plea bargain to avoid risking a jury trial—and the death penalty. Still, at sentencing, Hickerson offered a de facto "trans panic" defense for his actions—insisting that, while they had been chatting online for several months, he was not aware Whigham was transgender until after they had sex. When she revealed her gender identity, he claimed, he just "snapped."

“I lost. I lost it,” he said in court, adding that he didn't remember much of what happened afterward.

“I apologize to the family,” Hickerson said in court. “I really, really wish it had turned out differently. If I could take it back, I would.”

Whigham's mother, Vickie Blackney Whigham, called the plea bargain "a slap in the face."

"He gets a chance to see his family and I don’t have that chance with my child,” she told Sun Herald.

Dee Whigham was the 16th of 27 trans people reported murdered in the U.S. in 2016. At least 15 trans people have been reported murdered in 2017 so far.

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