A trans-identified male has been charged with first-degree murder after allegedly stabbing a 50-year-old man 13 times on Chicago’s South Side. Prosecutors say the horrific crime was committed in front of a 7-year-old child, and the brutal attack caused the tip of the knife to break off and embed in the victim’s skull.
Kelly Day, 32, of Chatham, was charged following the October 7 killing in the 1400 block of East 87th Street. The victim, Larry Young, was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he died.
At a detention hearing on October 10, prosecutors said Young pushed Day before walking away towards a gas station across the street. According to the prosecution’s account, Day followed him and the two fought. Surveillance footage allegedly shows Day standing over Young as he lay on the ground and repeatedly stabbing his head, neck and upper shoulders.
Authorities say a pathologist recovered a broken blade tip from Young’s skull. The medical examiner determined that he died from multiple sharp force injuries.
Assistant State Attorney Sara Grgurovic also described an earlier confrontation involving Day at a McDonald’s, where a group of people had mocked Day for using the women’s toilets. Day subsequently told his wife that he did not want “bullies” to get away with making fun of him for being trans.
However, Young is not believed to have beeb part of the group who ridiculed Day. Young approached Day later on that evening while he was with his wife and his stepson as they walked along 87th Street, making comments about Day being transgender that prosecutors say prompted an argument. Day became “extremely angry” and resisted his wife’s attempts to pull him away, according to prosecutors.
After the stabbing, which took place in full view of Day’s own 7-year-old stepson, prosecutors say Day gave two different accounts of his injury in calls to 911, initially claiming that he had been hurt while defending himself against a “pervert,” while in a later call, he said he had cut himself while cooking.
Day allegedly discarded the knife before seeking treatment for a cut finger at Jackson Park Hospital, where he was ultimately arrested. Investigators recovered a knife with part of its blade missing.
After his arrest, Day claimed self-defense, telling investigators that Young had used a bigoted slur, made a gun gesture and threatened to have someone beat up him and his wife. Judge John Hock ordered Day detained pending trial, citing the brutality of the attack among the reasons for his decision, with Day’s next court appearance scheduled for October 13.
Since news of the arrest, multiple news outlets have focused on the alleged “transphobia” Day claimed to have been the victim of in the lead up to Young’s murder.
The Chicago Tribune quoted Isa Noyola, a trans-identified male who directs the Border Butterfly Project, attributing the incident to “the political climate, the social climate that we’re living in.” Noyola blamed “hate groups” and political leaders for demonizing trans-identified people. The report also discussed Mayor Brandon Johnson’s “Transfemicide Working Group,” an initiative concerned with the killing of trans-identified males, despite the person killed in this case being Young.
Hoodline’s headline read “Judge Orders South Side Trans Woman Held in Fatal Stabbing of Bully”, labelling Young a bully without quotation marks. Prosecutors had attributed the remark about “bullies” to Day, referring to the separate group at McDonald’s before he encountered Young.
If convicted, Day may be placed in a women’s prison in accordance with precedents set by previous litigation backed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the state.
In December 2025, Reduxx reported that Jordan Kuykendall, also known as “Sora”, had been moved to Logan Correctional Center, a women’s prison, while serving a 40-year sentence for the 2013 stabbing murder of his former girlfriend, 17-year-old Erin Schneider. She was found dead just hours before a court appearance concerning an emergency protection order sought by her mother.
In a separate investigation, Reduxx detailed the case of Andre Cashmere Patterson, also known as “Janiah Monroe”, who strangled his cellmate, Kimani Muhammad, in Cook County jail in 2006. He was similarly transferred to Logan in April 2019 following ACLU-backed “discrimination” lawsuit.
Two months after that transfer, a female inmate filed a report alleging that Patterson had raped her. In a subsequent lawsuit, she accused prison staff of trying to classify the assault as consensual and coercing her to retract her allegation. The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in September 2022.
Reduxx also reported on John Wesley Finnegan, who began calling himself “Hannah Dagny” years into a 22-year sentence for strangling his mother, Mary, in 2008. He later told police that he had sexually abused her corpse.
In December 2025, Reduxx documented Finnegan’s placement at Decatur Correctional Center, an Illinois women’s prison with a mother-baby unit. Chicago-based lawyers had also sought clemency for him, portraying him as a survivor of abuse.