Karen Leticia Castro Hernandez, a 23-year-old Hispanic/Latina woman, was killed on March 13, 2021, after police were called to an apartment complex on Indianapolis’ southeast side for a reported homicide in the 4400 block of Lickridge Court. When officers arrived, she had been shot, and she was pronounced dead shortly afterward as the scene turned chaotic and urgent.
As detectives tried to piece together what happened, they realized a 7-year-old child who had been at the scene was suddenly missing. The boy—identified by police as Marco Antonio Jimenes Castro—was believed to be with an adult man and, for several tense hours, authorities treated the situation as a potential danger to the child as well as a homicide investigation. Just after midnight, around 12:15 a.m. on March 14, the child was found safe.
Investigators quickly focused on a domestic-related confrontation. Prosecutors later described witness accounts of an argument immediately before the gunshot, followed by the victim’s voice—shaken and pleading—saying she did not want to die. In the aftermath, the suspect was reported to have left with the child, pushing the case from a single crime scene into an active search.
The next day, law enforcement located and arrested Marco Pacheco-Aleman in Floyd County. He was formally charged in Marion County with one count of murder, and authorities continued to frame the killing as domestic-related. Prosecutors also said evidence recovered after his arrest included a bullet in his pocket that matched the bullet used in the killing.
The case moved through the courts over the following year and a half. After a two-day jury trial, Pacheco-Aleman was found guilty of murder on November 2, 2022, and on December 16, 2022, he was sentenced to 55 years in prison—an outcome prosecutors said reflected both the brutality of the killing and the trauma inflicted on the child left behind.
