KERN COUNTY, Calif. – Hannah Tubbs — a transgender California inmate convicted of molesting a child and subsequently protected by Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon under a cloud of controversy — has been charged with murder in neighboring Kern County.
The first-degree murder charge filed in Kern County on Tuesday comes after authorities recently charged Tubbs in connection to a 2019 robbery, Fox News reported.
Tubbs is scheduled for arraignment Tuesday afternoon. He’s being held on $1 million bond, according to Kern County documents.
Further information regarding the homicide was not immediately available as of Tuesday morning.
The Tubbs case in Los Angeles County became a lightning rod as Gascon’s critics used it as one of many examples of the failed progressive prosecutor’s policies.
The controversial case saw the defendant plead guilty earlier this year to a 2014 sexual assault of a young girl inside a restroom at a Denny’s restaurant when the then-suspect was just weeks from turning 18.
According to prosecutors, Tubbs grabbed the girl by the throat, locked her in a stall, and put his hand down the girl’s pants.
Law Officer provided the following overview of the case in January:
Tubbs is a 26-year-old biological male who now wants to identify as a female. He was recently convicted of sexually assaulting a child when he was 17, the Post Millennial reported.
Tubbs was not tried or convicted during his juvenile years, but as an adult. Nevertheless, he’s been sentenced to serve two years in a juvenile detention facility.
Moreover, Tubbs will not be required to register as a sex-offender since the crime was committed while he was a minor.
Tubbs did not begin a gender transition from male to female until after being taken into custody on charges of child molestation, according the American Conservative.
In 2014, when Tubbs was still 17, and just prior to turning 18, he sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl in the bathroom of a Denny’s restaurant in Palmdale California, ABC 7 reported.
A DNA match in 2019 linked Tubbs to the crime. He later confessed and was charged in 2021, seven years after the offense occurred.
Gascon refused to transfer the case to adult court. As a result, Tubbs was sentenced to two years at a juvenile facility, as a 26-year-old transgender, which infuriated many people.
It also worth noting that under California law Tubbs could serve as little as six months and would not be required to register as a sex offender.
“Tubbs had a very lengthy criminal record before George Gascón allowed Tubbs to be sentenced to minimal time in a juvenile facility, which included arrests and convictions for murder, robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, domestic violence and even a prior sexual assault of a 4-yr-old girl,” Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Jon Hatami told Fox News Digital.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger called the Tubbs sentence “unsatisfactory.”
“Judge Barrera’s hands were tied today – due to the fact that the DA’s office failed to file a motion to transfer Tubbs to adult criminal court, which is where she rightly belongs,” Barger said. “Instead, we’re left with a 26-year-old individual sentenced to two years in a juvenile facility in isolation, separated by sight and sound from the other juveniles.”
It was later revealed that Tubbs gloated during a jailhouse phone call about the case and bragged about dodging the requirement to register as a sex offender, Law Officer reported.
According to Fox, the accused murder suspect is currently being held under the name James Tubbs in Kern County.
