A former Christian pastor shot a trans woman to death. He’s getting put away for a long time.

The former pastor of the Logos Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan has pled guilty to second-degree murder and a felony firearm charge related to the shooting death of Kelly Stough, 36, a Black transgender woman.

Stough’s body was found at 6 a.m. on December 7, 2018 in Detroit. Police believed that Albert Weathers, now 46, shot her and then fled the scene of the crime to go to work at his day job at the Great Lakes Water Authority. He called the police an hour after the shooting to say that someone had tried to rob him and that he shot the perpetrator by accident, but prosecutors believe that he and Stough had an argument about money.

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Two other men have been arrested in connection with the string of crimes.

“She will not be forgotten. She mattered,” said prosecutor Kym Worthy in a statement. “We will continue to aggressively prosecute those who bring harm to this and other Wayne County communities.”

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As part of the plea agreement, Weathers will face eight years for the murder charge and two for the firearm charge. Prosecutors told the court that Stough’s mother, Jessica Chantae Stough, “acknowledged that she agreed and was grateful for the resolution in the case.”

When he was originally questioned by police, Weathers said that Stough jumped into his car and demanded money when he was in the neighborhood where he killed her, which is known to be frequented by sex workers and their clients. He said that she had a sharp metal object, so he pulled out his .40-caliber Glock. He said Stough said, “Shoot me… shoot me,” when he raised the gun at her.

“My intent was not to discharge my weapon,” he told police when he was questioned in 2018. “It went off by mistake.”

Kyra Butts, another out transgender sex worker in the area, testified in a preliminary hearing in 2019 that Weathers frequently went on “dates” with transgender women. Butts said that she stopped seeing Weathers because he gave her “the run around” when it came to paying her.

Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Jaimie Powell Horowitz said that Stough and Weathers were actually in an argument about money when Weathers shot her.

“The aggressor in this case has always been Mr. Weathers,” Horowitz said. “The first person to produce a weapon is Mr. Weathers. Mr. Weathers’ priority is getting to work and not getting caught.”

“She was disposable,” he continued. “He threw her out like trash and left her to die in the streets.”

“I want people to know that because she was transgender doesn’t mean that she was not loved, that she was not cared for,” Jessica Chantae Stough said in 2018. “She has a family who cared about her, who loved her, and I want them to know that transgender ladies — expressly those of color — they’re just not throwaways; people care about them.”

“She was educated, she was God-filled, she loved church, she loved others. As a human being in the United States of America, you have the right to be who you want to be, and you shouldn’t be shamed or bullied or persecuted for the choice you make.”

“This case reflects the excessive brutality that members of Detroit’s transgender community constantly face,”said Dana Nessel, the current Michigan Attorney General who was the president of the LGBTQ+ organization Fair Michigan at the time.