The Charlottesville Police Department publicly reclassified the four-and-a-half year old missing persons case of Sage Smith as a homicide on Tuesday.
Sage Smith, a black transgender woman, was last seen on Nov. 20, 2012 by witnesses around West Main Street by the Amtrak Station. Smith was reportedly set to meet with a man named Erik McFadden that night.
Lt. Steve Upman of the Charlottesville Police Department says the decision to reclassify the case after all of these years is due to the “totality” of the details.
“It was more about the totality of everything up to this point and that Dashad Sage Smith has not been heard from since she was reported missing in November of 2012,” Upman said. “We felt that this was the logical next step to continue on with this investigation.”
Upman says this reclassification will broaden the scope of what they are able to investigate and gives them easier access to search warrants and potential assists from outside resources like the U.S. Marshals.
The police questioned McFadden soon after the disappearance and he denied meeting with Smith, however McFadden emailed his girlfriend saying he did meet with Smith but Smith went off with other people. A few days after Smith’s disappearance, McFadden disappeared.
In November 2015, the Charlottesville Police Department released new information about the night, including text messages between Smith and McFadden and unconfirmed accounts putting Smith alone at Wild Wing Cafe next to the train station. McFadden is still a person of interest in the case.
Many family members and LGBTQ-advocacy groups have been critical of the Charlottesville Police Department’s handling of Sage’s case, specifically, with the police’s constant references to Sage as Dashad Smith, her birth name.
A Facebook post was published in 2015 that was written by Donna Gasapo, an activist who has been supporting the Smith family, and Sage’s grandmother, Lolita Smith.
“HER NAME IS SAGE SMITH,” the post said. “These anti-trans practices by both the local media and the local police department are at the heart of the racism and transphobia which result in alarming rates of both suicides amongst trangender [sic] youth and murders of trans women of color.”
According to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, 2016 was the deadliest year for transgender woman. Twenty-seven transgender women were reportedly murdered last year, with the majority of these being transgender women of color. GLAAD reports that this number is also low due to police departments misgendering or misreporting transgender victims.
In an email to The Cavalier Daily, the Charlottesville chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice criticized local police for not putting enough focus on Smith’s case, alluding to the efforts in the Hannah Graham investigation.
“CPD has spent an inappropriately small amount of time and resources on finding Sage,” SURJ wrote. “Given their responses to the abduction of young white cis women, it seems clear that their lack of interest in Sage's case is a direct result of her status as a black trans woman.”
The case was actually reclassified as a homicide back in December, but the police department decided to hold off on publicizing this information to give the family and a new detective on the case time to get acquainted with the facts.
“We did the media release with hopes it would generate some tips,” Upman said. “We are still asking for the public’s assistance.”
Anyone with information of tips of this case is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 434-977-4000. A $20,000 reward for relevant case information is currently being offered.
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