{"id":107119,"date":"2025-07-31T08:48:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T08:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/107119\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T08:48:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T08:48:16","slug":"navajo-tribal-members-to-spend-decades-in-prison-over-transgender-persons-murder-doj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/107119\/","title":{"rendered":"Navajo tribal members to spend decades in prison over transgender person’s murder: DOJ"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

PHOENIX<\/strong> – Officials with the United States Attorney’s Office announced on July 30 that two Navajo tribal members were given decades-long prison sentences in connection with the murder of a transgender person.<\/p>\n

What we know:<\/p>\n

Per the statement, 25-year-old Isiah Adam Smith of Leupp, Ariz. was given a 324-month prison sentence on July 28, after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.<\/p>\n

The statement notes that Smith’s co-defendant, identified as 24-year-old Trevor Joe Begay of Tuba City, was sentenced to 365 months in prison in September 2024. Begay also pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.<\/p>\n

The backstory:<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said the murder happened around June 11, 2021. While the statement did not identify the victim by name, they did use female pronouns for the victim.<\/p>\n

“Smith and Begay had previously communicated with the victim online, where she disclosed to them that she was transgender,” read a portion of the statement. “Smith and Begay decided to \u2018teach the victim a lesson.'”<\/p>\n

Per investigators, Smith and Begay arranged to meet the victim in the middle of the night, and when the victim got into Smith and Begay’s car, they took her cell phone, drove her into the desert, and then beat her to death. The incident happened on the Navajo nation.<\/p>\n

“Smith and Begay attempted to cover up their crimes by burning their bloody clothes and the victim\u2019s cell phone. The victim\u2019s body was found the morning after her death by a hiker,” officials wrote.<\/p>\n

LGBTQ<\/a>Crime and Public Safety<\/a>Arizona<\/a>News<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX – Officials with the United States Attorney’s Office announced on July 30 that two Navajo tribal members…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":97629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,6082,5603,50,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-107119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-crime-publicsafety","12":"tag-lgbtq","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-phoenix","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114946985470033576","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}