WASHINGTON — D.C. police were still searching Thursday for the two women and a man who stabbed and beat a transgender woman in a Northeast laundromat on Sunday, while screaming anti-gay slurs. The 31-year-old victim, Nysia Armstead, spent days in the hospital, but has finally been released.
"I got stabbed in my head, where I have 18 stitches right here," Armstead said in an exclusive interview in her Southeast, D.C. apartment. "And I have like 40 stitches in my right arm."
Armstead is furious that the three people who attacked her with their fists and a large pocket knife are still at large.
"Like really mentally stressed and depressed," she said. "I don't wanna be sad. I don't want to be around nobody."
She asked WUSA9 to blur her face, fearing her attackers will come after her again.
"I'm alive -- that's the most important thing," she said.
The assault Sunday night at the Capitol Laundry Mat on Benning Road, NE was caught on tape. Police are investigating it as a hate crime.
"I do believe that I was attacked because of being transgender," Armstead said. "They kept calling me 'f****! She was walking around, marching around calling me a 'f****!' I said man, just leave me alone."
The Human Rights Campaign said so far this year in the U.S., at least 28 transgender or gender non-conforming people have been murdered. Most of them are Black or Latinx transgender women, HRC said, including Danika "Danny" Henson, who was shot to death in Baltimore last month.
Armstead said she feels very vulnerable.
"I feel really really bad," she said. "It's like every day I'm looking at it that my life is almost been taken away."
Armstead said it started as a disagreement over a washing machine and escalated into an attack that nearly cost her her life.
A reward up to $1,000 is offered for information that leads to an arrest.
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