Oscar Raul Gutierrez-Mendoza, a 21-year-old Hispanic male, was shot on the evening of May 9, 2015, while seated in the front passenger seat of a parked car at an apartment complex in the 1400 block of South Sixth Street in Sunnyside, Washington. An assailant walked up and fired into the vehicle, striking him once in the chest; the bullet passed through his torso and caused fatal bleeding. It was the city’s first homicide in three years.
Witnesses reported hearing a rapid volley—ten or more shots—before emergency responders arrived around 7:30 p.m. Another man at the scene was also shot and taken to the hospital in critical condition. The apartment parking lot was strewn with shell casings as detectives cordoned off the area and began collecting evidence through the night.
Within weeks, investigators identified a suspect. On May 25, 2015, members of the U.S. Marshals Service and Sunnyside police arrested 21-year-old Raymundo Casares of Outlook, Washington, in Snohomish. He was booked into the Yakima County jail on $2 million bond and charged with aggravated first-degree murder, along with additional counts tied to the other victims who were shot at the scene.
At trial in September 2019, prosecutors argued that Casares opened fire on Gutierrez-Mendoza and his relatives because they were wearing blue clothing, including a Los Angeles Dodgers cap, which the state contended was misread as a gang signal. Testimony described how Gutierrez-Mendoza was killed, his brother Jorge was struck by two bullets and left paralyzed, and a cousin was shot at but not hit. A Yakima County jury found Casares guilty of aggravated first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, and unlawful possession of a firearm. Subsequent appellate filings and opinions recount those facts and the challenged eyewitness identifications from the case.
