Las Vegas woman searches for answers in son’s shooting death

Saida Maldonado cannot stand the scent of flowers anymore.

They remind the Las Vegas woman of her son’s death more than a month ago. Jared Medina was 24 when he was killed.

Maldonado said Wednesday that she is grateful for the community that embraced her and her family after her son died – for friends who cooked for them, planned tributes and raised money.

But now flowers remind her of her middle child’s funeral. The attar of roses just smells like death.

“The other day I got a customer, and she had a perfume that reminded me of flowers. I couldn’t serve her,” the waitress said. “As soon as I smelled it, it went in my stomach. I got really sick.”

A MOTHER’S PAIN

Maldonado goes outside when she feels like she’s going to cry. She said she doesn’t want anyone to see her, and she wants to be strong for her two surviving children. Now she gets stomachaches more than anything.

One of the hardest parts is not knowing what happened to her son, she said. At a meeting with Las Vegas police investigators, Maldonado was told there were no good leads in her son’s case. She was told she needs to come to terms with the fact that police may never find the killer.

“I didn’t want to hear that,” she said. “In the back of your mind, you know it, that maybe it won’t be resolved, but it hurts.”

Las Vegas police found Medina’s body about 7 a.m. on Jan. 5 on West Lake Mead Boulevard, just east of Martin Luther King Boulevard. First responders did not notice any signs of trauma and did not open a criminal case, but an autopsy the next day showed he had been shot in the back. It was initially assumed that Medina had a drug overdose.

Metropolitan Police Department Detective Tod Williams said Friday that first responders saw what looked like vomit around his mouth and found a small amount of methamphetamine in his pocket. Homicide detectives were not notified until the body was at the coroner’s office.

“We didn’t even go to the scene,” Williams said. “We started a day behind.”

Williams said Medina was involved in a fight sometime between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. His knuckles and face were scraped when his body was found. Detectives worked with Medina’s girlfriend to track his movements with his cellphone data and pulled surveillance footage from businesses in the area.

Police released surveillance footage of Medina walking in the neighborhood the night he died, hoping the public would call in with tips.

“We have no witnesses,” Williams said.

Police have received a single tip, but it was not very credible, he said.

“It must have been someone who lives in that neighborhood,” Maldonado said of the shooter. “We think there is somebody who knows something.”

‘BRINGER OF LIGHT’

As Maldonado struggles to cope with the loss of her middle child, she also grapples with how to help his siblings heal. The trio did everything together growing up.

Medina’s surviving brother and sister have developed different approaches to processing their grief.

Saivi Lara, 21, is angry. She played in a band with Medina, and the two often talked about religion and mythology, and interpreted each other’s dreams.

“He could’ve been a philosopher. He was so smart like that,” Lara said.

Now she has dreams that her big brother is still alive. In one dream, he popped out of his casket at his funeral and announced that the whole thing was an elaborate hoax. When she awoke to realize her brother was still dead, she was furious.

She’s mad that her brother is gone, that police have not solved the case, that more isn’t being done to fix the blighted area where her brother died.

Justin Medina, 26, is more sentimental, his mother said.

Like his brother, Justin Medina’s appearance is tougher than his personality. His head is shaved, and his body is covered in tattoos, including a bit of ink on his face, under his eye. But he cries every day.

He has grown close to Jared Medina’s 2-year-old daughter, Aila. She and her mother moved in with Maldonado after the killing.

The toddler wiped tears from Justin Medina’s face last week as he hugged her and promised to never leave.

“Every time I see my niece, that’s my brother,” he said.

Lara explained that Aila’s name comes from her father’s love for mythology. It means “bringer of light.”

“I think she connects us all in some ways,” Maldonado said.

Contact Wesley Juhl at wjuhl@reviewjournal.com and 702-383-0391. Follow @WesJuhl on Twitter.