“Habitual violent offender” arrested in gruesome death of trans woman in Miami Beach

A transgender woman was brutally beaten to death in the early hours of Tuesday morning as she lay sleeping near the entrance to Miami City Ballet in South Beach.

A 53-year-old “habitual violent offender” was arrested later in the day, the Miami Herald reported.

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Luis Ángel Diaz Castro, 23, is the 19th transgender, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming American to die by violence in 2023.

Surveillance video reveals Andrea Doria Dos Passos, 37, whom police say was homeless, lying down outside the ballet’s headquarters around midnight.

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Hours later, a man identified as Gregory Fitzgerald Gibert, 53, can be seen looking intently at Dos Passos, walking away from her, and then picking up a metal pipe he finds on the ground. He takes a seat on a bench near the sleeping woman, then walks toward her and “begins to strike her with the metal pipe about the head and face several times,” according to a Miami Beach Police report.

After smashing Dos Passos’ skull several times, Gibert can be seen walking from the scene and dropping the weapon in a nearby trashcan. Police discovered the pipe later that morning.

An employee at Miami City Ballet found Dos Passos’ lifeless body around 7:00 am and tried to wake her. When he saw blood, he called 911.

Police report paramedics observed extensive lacerations on Dos Passos’ face and the back of her head. Two wooden sticks were lodged into her nostrils.

“One stick exited over the right eye and the other appeared lodged into the nose cavity,” police detailed in Gibert’s arrest report. “A puncture wound was also located in the victim’s chest.”

Police matched Gibert’s description to a previous mugshot and found him across Biscayne Bay in a rough neighborhood in Miami. He was wearing some of the same bloodstained clothing he had on during the attack.

Despite the brutal nature of the killing, a hallmark of violence against trans victims, Miami Beach Police Chief Wayne Jones said in a statement on Wednesday that the evidence did not indicate Dos Passos was the target of a hate crime.

“At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that Andrea was targeted because of her sexuality or gender,” Jones said. “However, we understand the concerns within the LGBTQIA+ community, and I want to emphasize that MBPD is committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of all our community members.”

Flamingo Democrats, the Miami-Dade chapter of Florida’s LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus, urged the state attorney’s office to add a hate crime enhancement to Gibert’s second-degree murder charge.

“The safety of all residents of Miami Beach and Miami-Dade County should be of the utmost importance, especially those in marginalized communities such as our transgender community,” the group said in a statement.

Gibert was on parole after a year-long stretch in Miami-Dade County Corrections awaiting trial on charges of aggravated assault and attempted robbery. He was released on April 17 with time served.

The alleged assailant earned the designation “habitual violent offender” with more than two dozen criminal cases in Florida since 2000, including aggravated assault, attempted robbery, gun charges, cocaine possession and resisting arrest.

Gibert was booked into a Miami-Dade County jail, where he remains.

“She had no chance to defend herself whatsoever,” Dos Passos’s stepfather, Victor Van Gilst, told CBS News in Miami.  

“I don’t know if this was a hate crime since she was transgender or if she had some sort of interaction with this person because he might have been homeless as well,” Van Gilst said. “She has been struggling with mental health issues for a long time, going back to when she was in her early 20s.”

For Dos Passos’ mother, Van Gilst added, “This is like a nightmare that turned into reality.”