Dominique Lucious, a 26-year-old Black transgender woman, was found dead in her Springfield, Missouri, apartment on the morning of April 8, 2021. Officers responding to reports of gunfire around 7:00 a.m. discovered Lucious inside her home with a fatal gunshot wound to the chest and pronounced her dead at the scene. Police opened a homicide investigation that examined digital evidence and witness accounts to reconstruct her final hours.

Investigators determined Lucious had been communicating with a man she met on the dating site Plenty of Fish and arranged to meet someone identified as Charles Nelson at her apartment that morning. A witness in the home said Lucious woke them to say she was expecting a visitor, then the witness later awoke to gunshots and saw a man standing over Lucious before the intruder fled, warning the witness not to look. Detectives followed the online correspondence and the witness description to locate 28-year-old Charles Nelson the same day and found blood on his shoes and a firearm matching the shell casing at the scene.

Nelson was arrested and booked on charges of second-degree murder and armed criminal action. If anyone knew Dominique, her activities that morning, or saw a black Ford Focus near North Main Avenue on April 8, 2021, please share what was seen.