TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Every thirtieth day of the month, Patricia Salcedo and her family can be found at her son’s memorial on Nogales Highway and Aerospace Parkway.
With cars whipping past them, it’s not hard for them to forget Malinko Reino who died on July 30 last year.
“He was the man of the house I guess you could say so he was always there doing the hard work,” Salcedo sad.
Reino was only sixteen years old when he was shot while watching a street race at the same intersection as his memorial. His family believes the shooter was across the street and was not a part of the event.
“If I knew it was something dangerous, I would never have sent my son out there,” Salcedo said.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said there has been a lot of street racing on Nogales Highway and the crimes most often associated with racing are drug and weapons violations.
“The racers that do it…their cars, you know, they’re at risk of running off the road,” Salcedo said.
Despite her son's death, she said watching these takeover events can be safe.
“If the cops would give them a chance to do what they like doing at a certain place, it would be a lot safer for everybody because it’ll be controlled,” she said.
TPD said there were 102 traffic violations for racing on highways in 2022 and 2023. That number had gone up for four straight years, but violations in the previous two years were still higher than 2021.
KGUN9 reporter Andrew Christiansen reached out to TPD, but they did not respond when asked how they plan to address the issue this year.
Last November Tucson city manager Michael Ortega recommended to the Tucson City council and mayor that they should invest into more technology to stop street racing. One example would be gunshot detectors. All that technology would cost about 994 thousand dollars.
Salcedo said even though she’s still looking for answers, the street racing community was and still is there for her.
“I still get messages from some of the people that were here that night asking how we’re doing,” she said.
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Andrew Christiansen is a reporter for KGUN 9. Before joining the team, Andrew reported in Corpus Christi, Texas for KRIS6 News, Action 10 News and guest reported in Spanish for Telemundo Corpus Christi. Share your story ideas with Andrew by emailing andrew.christiansen@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook, or Twitter.
