Mother seeks answers after daughter, 20, murdered in L.A. sex work hub ‘the blade’

As a self-described survivor of human trafficking who runs a corporation devoted to serving to others affected by the crime, Debra Rush mentioned she’s heard the identical story many instances: A troubled younger individual flees house and finally ends up being compelled into intercourse work and focused with violence on the streets of Los Angeles.

Solely Rush is now dealing with a special model of the acquainted tragedy — one the place her personal daughter is the sufferer.

Kendra Rush, 20, was shot to loss of life almost two weeks in the past in a stretch of South L.A. referred to as a hub of town’s intercourse commerce.

Police say Kendra was standing close to the nook of Figueroa and West seventieth streets when somebody walked up and shot her within the head simply after 4 a.m. on March 21. Bystander footage posted on-line confirmed a lady watching as paramedics carried out CPR on the 20-year-old, a glance of grave concern on the lady’s face. Kendra was pronounced useless on the scene.

Her slaying occurred in opposition to a backdrop of broader debate over the best way to shield employees from violence, which has revealed cracks in the criminal justice reform movement. Some proponents of decriminalization say those that interact within the work of their very own volition are being put additional in hurt’s method by efforts to curb trafficking. In the meantime, advocates for stronger intervention fear that the rollback of anti-loitering legal guidelines has restricted the flexibility of legislation enforcement to go after these answerable for endangering employees’ lives.

On Thursday, Los Angeles police introduced the arrest of a 29-year-old man suspected of murdering a trans lady within the Vermont-Slauson space, one other killing authorities have mentioned they imagine was linked to intercourse work. The suspect, Bryan Blackmon, is being held on $3 million bail, in accordance with on-line jail data.

Rush, 44, mentioned she had devoted her life to stopping violence in opposition to intercourse employees even earlier than her daughter’s loss of life. The Fresno resident began a nonprofit in Central California’s San Joaquin Valley referred to as Breaking the Chains, whose intention is to attach trafficking victims with housing, counseling and different companies in hopes of serving to them escape what Rush refers to as “the life.”

Rush acquired the information about Kendra as she boarded a flight house after touring to Washington, D.C. She wept into the telephone. The detectives investigating her daughter’s loss of life wouldn’t inform her a lot. However she says they did inform her Kendra was doubtless being compelled to promote intercourse by gang members who management a portion of Figueroa referred to as “the Blade,” extracting “hire” funds from employees there.

Dexter Navarro, an investigator with the LAPD’s South Bureau Murder Division, mentioned he couldn’t touch upon whether or not Kendra was being trafficked as a result of the case is ongoing. Rush mentioned that she is is hesitant to disclose too many particulars for worry of compromising the investigation. However, she feels sure about what occurred to her daughter:

“The identical folks she thought would shield her, I do know had been those who killed her.”

Rising up, Rush mentioned, Kendra’s life revolved round portray, cheerleading and the English dramas and films she used to binge in her free time. For a time in her teenagers she went via a part the place she “solely spoke in a British accent,” her mom recalled. She graduated from highschool at 16 and went to work at a neighborhood hospital as an environmental companies aide.

Kendra Rush in an undated childhood picture supplied by her mom. Debra Rush mentioned that her daughter’s life rising up revolved round portray, cheerleading and films she used to binge in her free time. Kendra was shot to loss of life in March, in an incident Debra says was associated to intercourse trafficking.

(Debra Rush)

Rush now sees painful reminders of her daughter’s childhood in every single place. She broke down crying on Easter Sunday whereas making deviled eggs for her different kids, one thing she mentioned Kendra at all times insisted on doing herself.

“She can be ready to fill the eggs … to verify they had been excellent,” Rush mentioned.

Images of Kendra typically confirmed her flashing a broad smile. In a single publish on Instagram, she wore inexperienced scrubs as she made a peace signal. However Rush mentioned the completely satisfied exterior hid a deep properly of ache and struggles with psychological well being.

Mom and daughter each lived lives marked by recurring abuse and violence. Rush suspects a few of her daughter’s points had been rooted in sexual abuse inflicted by a caretaker. She additionally recalled an incident on the top of the pandemic in 2020 the place she mentioned Kendra was the sufferer of a violent house invasion. Two suspects broke in whereas she was house alone and assaulted her at gunpoint.

“She was alone with them for 45 minutes, and I don’t need to go into particulars,” Rush mentioned.

The suspects had been later charged and Kendra testified at their trial, an agonizing expertise that her mom mentioned despatched her on a downward spiral. Her daughter had additionally been recognized with bipolar dysfunction, which Rush mentioned compounded her scenario.

“That’s the place we sort of misplaced Kendra,” her mom mentioned.

Kendra started having violent outbursts and grew withdrawn, Rush mentioned. Not feeling secure of their house, Kendra moved out earlier this yr and relocated to L.A., probably to be nearer to her organic father, Rush mentioned.

“She didn’t really feel secure in her personal thoughts, she didn’t really feel secure at house,” she mentioned. “Each time these children have nowhere to go, no job, no nothing, it didn’t matter how a lot I talked to them.”

Kendra’s father wasn’t round a lot when she was younger, Rush mentioned, and she or he was generally absent herself as she coped with PTSD that stemmed from her personal expertise of being “violently trafficked for a number of months” as a younger grownup.

Rush had been residing in Fresno when she was kidnapped and compelled to interact in intercourse work to pay again a drug debt her mom owed within the mid-2000s, she mentioned. One of many areas her captors dropped her off was on Figueroa Avenue. She finally ran away and located her method again to Fresno.

Afterward, she sought to know the ways in which traffickers prey on the vulnerabilities of their victims. She discovered that some who had lately gone via experiences just like hers needed to return to their abusers. She realized that whereas some traffickers used drive, or the specter of it, others employed extra delicate strategies: Paying for meals, shopping for new garments and offering a pleasant ear to younger ladies who weren’t used to being showered with consideration. Over time, she mentioned, their victims started feeling indebted.

Such psychological manipulation generally performs out over a number of months, she mentioned.

In recent times, Rush started to make a reputation for herself in anti-trafficking circles. She talked about her program’s mission throughout common visitor appearances on native TV information stations and was on a first-name foundation with lawmakers in Sacramento and D.C. who had been pushing for brand new anti-trafficking legal guidelines. She was additionally the topic of a ebook referred to as “A Cry of the Coronary heart” about her life.

She reminded Kendra of her personal expertise typically, and the 2 had developed a “security plan” if Kendra discovered herself in such a scenario. In addition they had an understanding that Kendra would textual content her often to point out that she wasn’t in peril. The messages stopped within the days earlier than her loss of life.

Ladies stroll alongside Figueroa Avenue in South Los Angeles, in an space the place the best variety of prostitution-related arrests within the metropolis are made.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Occasions)

Kendra’s capturing was the second in the span of 48 hours in Los Angeles involving victims who had been considered engaged in intercourse work.

Within the first case, a transgender lady was shot March 21 within the early-morning hours and her physique dumped onto Hoover Avenue between Slauson Avenue and West 59th Avenue. Mates of the 24-year-old sufferer, who glided by the identify Meraxes, began a GoFundMe web page to assist increase cash to cowl the household’s funeral prices. A message despatched to the fundraiser’s organizer was not instantly returned.

Meraxes wrote on her Instagram web page that she labored as a make-up artist and lived in a number of cities throughout Southern California. A number of folks left condolences below her most up-to-date publish, with one writing, “I like you a lot at all times and eternally you’ll by no means be forgotten.” One other referred to her by her nickname, Chun Li, and wrote that she was “at all times such an exquisite soul to be round.”

Her loss of life was at the least the seventh murder within the U.S. up to now this yr by which the sufferer was “transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming,” in accordance with the blog Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents, which paperwork violence in opposition to queer communities.

Surveillance digicam footage from a bar throughout the road from the place she was discovered confirmed the shadowy define of somebody getting out of a light-colored sedan and dragging the physique into the road earlier than driving away.

Investigators initially believed that she was shot within the automobile. The suspected gunman, Blackmon, is being held on $3 million bail, in accordance with on-line jail data. Police mentioned he was taken into custody March 29. His preliminary courtroom date hasn’t been set and it wasn’t instantly clear whether or not he had an legal professional.

The realm round the place Kendra died is generally busy with foot and automobile visitors, which means there could have been witnesses. Rush, whose group generally works with legislation enforcement, mentioned she hopes witnesses will come ahead.

And but, she mentioned, worry of being caught cooperating with police scares some into silence.

In response to the LAPD statistics, homicides citywide are up roughly 20% via the primary three months of the yr in contrast with the identical time in 2023; town ended final yr with 327 slayings.

A lady walks within the rain alongside Figueroa Avenue in South Los Angeles. Journey Out is a neighborhood group that helps those that are intercourse trafficked escape in South L.A., the place the best variety of prostitution-related arrests are made.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Occasions)

Within the weeks for the reason that killings of Kendra and Meraxes, police have stepped up their patrols within the space, together with officers on horseback. Los Angeles metropolis legal professional Hydee Feldstein Soto has signaled her workplace will proceed to aggressively prosecute traffickers, in addition to taking over motel homeowners whose properties are magnets for illicit conduct.

Some advocates accuse legislation enforcement and politicians of overstating the human trafficking drawback on Figueroa as a way to justify extra police crackdowns and the passage of harsher legal guidelines. Figueroa, these advocates argue, is like all given business intercourse hall: a mixture of folks being compelled or coerced into the high-risk work and people who are there by selection.

Advocates argue that current makes an attempt to handle trafficking have solely additional endangered an already susceptible group. For some, the work grew to become much more of a lifeline in the course of the pandemic as they struggled to help themselves or their households amid a rising scarcity of reasonably priced housing. Others, reduce off from conventional help methods, have discovered group amongst their fellow intercourse employees.

In between fielding telephone calls from well-wishers and choosing out a number of work of Kendra’s to show on the memorial service, she flew all the way down to L.A. to select up her physique and convey it house to Fresno.

She has struggled with whether or not she did sufficient to assist Kendra. In a prolonged publish on her Fb web page, she thought in regards to the grim irony that she assumed others had been additionally conscious of: How did her daughter fall sufferer to intercourse trafficking even after a lifetime of warnings?

If nothing else, she wrote, Kendra’s case proved that “anyone’s youngster” is susceptible.

Regardless of the horrors they endure, some trafficking victims start to type attachments to their abusers over time like a type of Stockholm Syndrome and start to outline their self-worth as “coming from individuals who buy them” for intercourse, Rush mentioned.

L.A. Metropolis Council voted to lock and board the 108 Motel in South Los Angeles resulting from quite a few every day arrests, intercourse trafficking and different crimes that impression the group.

(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)

The identical factor occurred to her, Rush mentioned, and she or he started to see indicators of this so-called “trauma bonding” in her daughter.

Anybody with details about both case is requested to name South Bureau Murder Division at 323-786-5100 or the after-hours quantity at 1-877-527-3247. Those that want to stay nameless can name Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477.