7th Tacoma Homicide of 2024: Yinairy Medino Castro
Life is dangerous when you’re homeless. It’s difficult to know who to trust, but it’s impossible to make it on your own. It’s only natural to band together and so homeless encampments are a thing in every city in America. Forty-year-old Yinairy Medino Castro stayed at an encampment in Tacoma near Delin Street and Tacoma Avenue South, near the iconic and condemned Holy Rosary Catholic Church.
When a 60-year-old man she thought she could trust touched her inappropriately, she told a friend who told her boyfriend. The boyfriend confronted the man about it. The man didn’t deny it and instead went into his tent where he retrieved a gun. He then went into the tent where Yinairy was sitting on an old couch and shot her multiple times.
Yinairy was found in the street and pronounced dead on the scene. She is Tacoma’s seventh homicide of 2024.
The 60-year-old man who murdered Yinairy was soon arrested and sentenced to 18 years in prison under a plea agreement.
Like most homeless individuals, Yinairy did not leave a large digital footprint. She was born in Puerto Rico. I can’t tell you much about her or her life. But I know from writing about homicides for almost twenty years that homeless people have loved ones. They have friends and family who sometimes haven’t a clue their loved one is in such living circumstances.
If you happen to be a friend or relative of Yinairy and you want to share a thought or memory of her, please use the comment section.
- Jack Cameron