A dozen eggs, bacon, maybe some biscuits: CeCe McDonald had a modest shopping list in mind, just a few things for breakfast the next day. It was midnight, the ideal time for a supermarket run. Wearing a lavender My Little Pony T-shirt and denim cutoffs, CeCe grabbed her purse for the short walk to the 24-hour Cub Foods. She preferred shopping at night, when the darkened streets provided some relief from the stares, whispers and insults she encountered daily as a transgender woman. CeCe, 23, had grown accustomed to snickers and double takes – and was practiced in talking back to strangers who’d announce, “That’s a man!” But such encounters were tiring; some days a lady just wanted to buy her groceries in peace.
And so it was that on a warm Saturday night in June 2011, CeCe and four friends, all African-Americans in their twenties, found themselves strolling the tree-lined streets of her quiet working-class Longfellow neighborhood in Minneapolis, toward a commercial strip. Leading the way was CeCe’s roommate Latavia Taylor and two purse-carrying gay men – CeCe’s makeshift family, whom she called “cousin” and “brothers” – with CeCe, a fashion student at a local community college, and her lanky boyfriend trailing behind. They were passing the Schooner Tavern when they heard the jeering.
“Faggots.”
Gathered outside the dive bar were a handful of cigarette-smoking white people, looking like an aging biker gang in their T-shirts, jeans and bandannas, motorcycles parked nearby. Hurling the insults were 47-year-old Dean Schmitz, in a white button-down and thick silver chain, and his 40-year-old ex-girlfriend Molly Flaherty, clad in black, drink in hand. “Look at that boy dressed as a girl, tucking his dick in!” hooted Schmitz, clutching two beer bottles freshly fetched from his Blazer, as CeCe and her friends slowed to a stop. “You niggers need to go back to Africa!”
Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald stepped in front of her friends, a familiar autopilot kicking in, shunting fury and fear to a distant place while her mouth went into motion. “Excuse me. We are people, and you need to respect us,” CeCe began in her lisping delivery, one acrylic-nailed finger in the air, her curtain of orange microbraids swaying. With her caramel skin, angled jaw and square chin, friends called her “CeCe” for her resemblance to the singer Ciara; even her antagonist Flaherty would later describe CeCe as “really pretty.” “We’re just trying to walk to the store,” CeCe continued, raising her voice over the blare of Schmitz and Flaherty’s free-associating invective: “bitches with dicks,” “faggot-lovers,” “niggers,” “rapists.” The commotion was drawing more patrons out of the bar – including a six-foot-eight, 310-pound biker in leather chaps – and CeCe’s boyfriend, Larry Thomas, nervously called to Schmitz, “Enjoy your night, man – just leave us alone.” CeCe and her friends turned to go. Then Flaherty glanced at Schmitz and laughed.
“I’ll take all of you bitches on!” Flaherty hollered, and smashed CeCe in the side of her face with a glass tumbler.
Just like that, a mundane walk to the store turned into a street brawl, in a near-farcical clash of stereotypes. Pandemonium erupted as CeCe and Flaherty seized each other by the hair; the bikers swung fists and hurled beer bottles, hollering “beat that faggot ass!”; and CeCe’s friends flailed purses and cracked their studded belts as whips. When the two sides separated, panting and disoriented, Flaherty was curled up amid the broken glass screaming, mistakenly, that she’d been knifed, and CeCe stood over her, her T-shirt drenched with her own blood. Touching her cheek, CeCe felt a shock of pain as her finger entered the open wound where Flaherty’s glass had punctured her salivary gland. Purse still over her shoulder, CeCe fast-walked from the scene. She’d made it more than a half-block away when she heard her friends calling, “Watch your back!”
CeCe whirled around to see Schmitz heading toward her: walking, then running, his face a twist of wild, unrestrained hatred. CeCe felt terror burst out from that remote place where she normally locked it away. She didn’t know that Schmitz’s veins were pounding with cocaine and meth. She didn’t know of his lengthy rap sheet, including convictions for assault. Nor did she know that under Schmitz’s shirt, inked across his solar plexus, was a four-inch swastika tattoo. All CeCe needed to see was the look on his face to know her worst fears were coming true: Her young life was about to end as a grim statistic, the victim of a hate crime.
“Come here, bitch!” Schmitz roared as he closed in. CeCe pedaled backward, blood dripping from her slashed face.
“Didn’t y’all get enough?” CeCe asked, defiant and afraid, while her hand fished into her large handbag for anything to protect herself. Her fingers closed on a pair of black-handled fabric scissors she used for school. She held them up high as a warning, their five-inch blades glinting in the parking-lot floodlights. Schmitz stopped an arm’s length away, raising clenched fists and shuffling his feet in a boxing stance. His eyes were terrible with rage.
“Bitch, you gonna stab me?” he shouted. They squared off for a tense moment: the furious white guy, amped up on meth, Nazi tattoo across his belly; the terrified black trans woman with a cartoon pony on her T-shirt; the scissors between them. CeCe saw Schmitz lunge toward her and braced herself for impact. Their bodies collided, then separated. He was still looking at her.
“Bitch – you stabbed me!”
“Yes, I did,” CeCe announced, even as she wondered if that could possibly be true; in the adrenaline of the moment, she’d felt nothing. Scanning Schmitz over, she saw no sign of injury – though in fact he’d sustained a wound so grisly that CeCe would later recall to police that the button-down shirt Schmitz wore that night was not white but “mainly red. Like one of them Hawaiian shirts.” CeCe waited until he turned to rejoin his crowd. Then she and Thomas ran arm in arm down the block toward the nearly empty Cub Foods parking lot, where they waited for police to arrive.
They didn’t see the scene unfolding behind them: how Schmitz took a few faltering steps, uttered, “I’m bleeding,” then lifted his shirt to unleash a geyser of blood. CeCe had stabbed him in the chest, burying the blade almost three and a half inches deep, slicing his heart. Blood sprayed the road as Schmitz staggered, collapsed and, amid his friends’ screams, died. When CeCe and Thomas waved down a police car minutes later, she was promptly handcuffed and arrested.