Gang ‘hood check’ led to fatal crash at Portland MAX stop, jury hears

A Norteños gang member killed a woman sitting at a Portland MAX stop when he shot and hit a rival, a jury found Wednesday.

Gladis Mendoza-Hernandez was sitting in a brick vestibule of the East 148th Avenue light rail station with her back to the tracks when Isai Ramos Damian pulled up on East Burnside Street and savagely shot her and two men around 11:20 p.m. on July 6, 2022.

Mendoza-Hernandez, 42, was struck twice and died at the scene. She was not a member of the rival Sureños gang, but prosecutors said one of the two men with her was.

A Multnomah County jury deliberated for about eight hours over two days before finding Ramos Damian, now 24, guilty of second-degree murder for her killing, as well as attempted murder, second-degree assault and unlawful use of a weapon to injure his rival.

Ramos Damian had finished a night out at the bars with his sister and was dropping off his girlfriend nearby when he spotted the group by chance and shouted: “What neighborhood are you from?”

One of the men, Brandon Dunn, responded that he was affiliated with “PLS,” a Sureño group, according to trial testimony.

Ramos Damian drove home to the Lumina Apartments in Gresham, let the car run for three minutes while he retrieved a handgun, then drove straight back to the area where the “hood check” took place, Senior Assistant District Attorney Todd Jackson told the jury Tuesday.

“Whoever did this shooting knew exactly who he was looking for,” Jackson said. “But the real tragedy is that Gladis Mendoza-Hernandez was not involved in this fight.”

The hail of bullets hit Mendoza-Hernandez in the back and arm and wounded Dunn in each foot, while the third man was able to jump from the platform unharmed.

Surveillance video captured the shooting, but the images were too pixelated to identify the driver of the 2021 Toyota Corolla used in the shooting, defense attorney Russell Barnett said in court.

Dunn initially told police the shooter was a “big bald black man,” Barnett said, and no weapon was found when Ramos Damian was arrested eight months after the shooting.

“There is no witness who has identified this man as the one who killed her,” Barnett said of Ramos Damian. “There is no physical evidence that he ever had a gun, much less used the gun in question.”

Jackson countered that Dunn also misidentified the suspect car as brown, though the video shows it was painted black, and eyewitness testimony is notoriously shaky.

Investigators were, however, able to trace the car’s movement from its infotainment system and by following cell phone signals from Ramos Damian and his sister.

Ramos Damian did not testify at trial, but after his arrest, a police detective noticed the “four dots” tattoo on his hand, the Norteños’ calling card, and asked him how he would identify a member of a rival gang.

Ramos Damian responded that once you’ve been on the street long enough, “you know who’s fucking and who’s not, you just know,” according to Detective Calvin Goldring, who testified at the trial.

Damian Ramos faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole in 25 years at a July 12 sentencing hearing before Circuit Judge Amy Baggio.

—Zane Sparling covers news and courts for The Oregonian/OregonLive. He can be reached at 503-319-7083, [email protected] or @pdxzane.

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Portland Area Homicides