Gray lived in foster care at the Malins’ home in Clark County on and off between 2013 and 2018.
According to Portland Police Bureau data, 33 people have been killed in Portland traffic as of July 8.
Pedestrian fatalities, however, tend to increase in the fall and winter months, when the days get darker and shorter.
The city has made considerable investment in Vision Zero, a plan adopted in 2015 to eliminate all traffic deaths by 2025.
One, the 82nd Avenue corridor, is where two men were struck and killed while crossing the thoroughfare in April.
On Northeast Marine Drive, where Gray was killed, speed cameras installed in 2018 have contributed to a 50% decrease in speeding on the road, according to a city report.
The city also is shifting its traffic enforcement toward dangerous driving.
The third generation in her family to grow up in foster care, Gray had a tough life before living with the Malins.
Dennis Malin, a Florida native who has lived in Clark County for more than a decade, was raised in foster care, too.
“We got to see Natalie bloom into a caring and beautiful woman,” Dennis Malin wrote in his eulogy to her.
She was one of the most authentic people I’ve ever met, and she was straightforward.
The Malins last spoke to Gray a month before her death, as she was leaving a psychiatric ward at a Portland hospital.
And at least eight out of the 113 people who died while experiencing homelessness in 2019 lost their lives after being struck by a car, truck or train, according to Multnomah County’s Domicile Unknown report, which is a review of deaths among people experiencing homelessness in the county.
“People who are experiencing houselessness are subject to finding habitation, like sidewalks and by highways,” said Molly Kringel, executive director of Portland Street Medicine.
Northeast Marine Drive is considered one of the deadliest stretches of road in the city.
Sgt.
“And what a privileged system that is — that because we have the means, our daughter gets potentially a chance at justice.
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