Mirela Martins de Freitas was 21 years old when she was stabbed multiple times at a bus terminal in Itarumã, Goiás, Brazil, on Oct. 3. SAMU emergency responders transported the young trans woman to a hospital, where she died from her injuries.
Goiás Military Police located a man shortly after the attack and took him into custody. His identity has not been publicly released. Police say he admitted stabbing Mirela and told officers that jealousy drove the argument that preceded the violence. Goiás Civil Police are investigating her killing.
The police account also brought Mirela’s family directly into what happened that day. Officers say the man told them that after stabbing Mirela, he called her mother and said, “Your daughter is dead at the bus station.” Mirela was still alive when he made that call. Her mother was forced into the immediate aftermath of the violence before her daughter had even died.
Mirela’s killing comes amid a documented record of lethal violence against trans people across Brazil. ANTRA, the National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals, documented 80 killings of trans people in Brazil during 2025. Seventy-seven of those victims were travestis or trans women, placing trans women overwhelmingly at the center of the deaths the organization recorded.
That violence repeatedly reaches trans people in public spaces. ANTRA documented 50 killings in streets, roads, vacant areas and other places of public circulation during 2025. Goiás accounted for five of the killings recorded that year, placing Mirela’s death in a state already present in the organization’s continuing documentation of violence against trans people.
Mirela’s family is now left carrying the loss of a 21-year-old daughter whose life ended through violence, while the man police say admitted stabbing her remains at the center of a criminal investigation. What happens next belongs to the accountability process: what Goiás Civil Police establish, what follows the arrest and whether Mirela’s killing receives sustained attention beyond the first reports. Her name and her life deserve to remain visible throughout that process.
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This never should have happened.
May her mother and family somehow find peace.