Paris Cameron’s killer, 19-year-old Devon Kareem Robinson, was convicted of murder in the deaths of Cameron, 20, and two others at a Detroit house party.
“Paris was a fireball,” said Cameron’s friend, Sunshine Johnson. “She was a loving spirit. She tried to help everybody”
Johnson said Cameron loved cooking soul food, voguing and watching RuPaul’s Drag Race.
On May 25, 2019, Cameron met 19-year-old Robinson at a Detroit gas station and invited him to attend a nearby party.
He hesitated.
“He would walk back to her, walk away from her, walk back,” says special prosecutor Jaimie Powell Horowitz.
Robinson walked home, then eventually changed his mind and went to the party. Police say he had sexual encounters with several people at the house party.
One witness said he left the party looking a little blank, Powell Horowitz tells PEOPLE.
Surveillance cameras show him pacing and dry heaving in the gas station parking lot before he returned to the house party.
“An hour later, you see the figure emerge running toward where the house party was. He kicks in the door and begins just fire indiscriminately killing three people,” Powell Horowitz tells PEOPLE. “Two others survived, but watched their friends die in their arms.”
Following his conviction on three counts of first-degree murder and other charges, Robinson was sentenced to three life terms in prison without parole on June 30, 2020.
“Hate comes in many forms, and self-hate is a driving factor in harming these trans women of color,” says Powell Horowitz.
Cameron was one of 26 transgender women murdered in 2019 in what the Human Rights Campaign has called an “epidemic of violence.”
Powell Horowitz said the murders are fueled by self-hate and fear.
“It’s almost always men who identify as straight who are harming trans women. It’s almost always motivated by fear of being found out. They would literally rather kill them than be found out,” Powell Horowitz says.
Johnson maintains a Facebook page, Long Live Paris, in Cameron’s memory.
“I’m going to always keep her memory alive,” Johnson says. “The love we had for one another was unconditional. That young lady was really everything I was trying to be. I miss her every day.”
