Killing of Dwayne Jones

Dwayne Jones was a 16-year-old boy from Montego Bay, Jamaica, who had been forced out of his family home at age 14 after being perceived as effeminate and bullied at school. He subsequently squatted in a derelict house with two transgender friends, Keke and Khloe, and was known among friends as "Gully Queen." Friends described him as a talented dancer who aspired to become a teacher or performer.

On the evening of 21 July 2013, Jones dressed in women's clothing and attended a dance party called Henessey Sundays in the Irwin area of Montego Bay with Keke and Khloe. He initially passed as female and danced with several men, but after a girl he knew from church learned his biological sex and informed her male friends, a group confronted him outside the venue. When his sex was confirmed, the crowd began using homophobic slurs. Jones ran when someone pulled his bra strap, and the crowd pursued and attacked him. He was beaten, stabbed, shot, and run over by a car, dying after slipping in and out of consciousness for roughly two hours. No one intervened to help him during the attack. Khloe was also attacked and narrowly avoided being raped, escaping by hiding in a church and nearby woods. Police found Jones's body in bushes along Orange Main Road at around 5 am and opened an investigation, collecting fourteen witness statements by mid-August 2013. Jones's family declined to claim his body. As of August 2015, the crime remained unsolved, with no arrests or charges made.

In October 2013, the derelict house where Jones had lived was set on fire by a group of men in what was believed to be a further anti-LGBT hate crime, displacing its four occupants; police declined a request to provide them protection. A charity, Dwayne's House, was later established in his memory to support homeless LGBT youth in Jamaica.

The killing was widely condemned within Jamaica, including by Justice Minister Mark Golding, and prompted commentary from academics and journalists at the University of the West Indies and in The Gleaner newspaper about pervasive homophobia and victim-blaming in Jamaican society. Local and international LGBT and human rights organizations — including J-FLAG, Quality of Citizenship Jamaica, Jamaicans for Justice, and Human Rights Watch — called for a thorough police investigation and for stronger legal protections for LGBT Jamaicans. The case also drew international attention, including from the U.S. State Department, which cited it in a 2014 briefing on global anti-LGBT violence, and from UK-based activists who protested outside Jamaica's London embassy.