Tacoma police seek tips in man’s homicide. Girlfriend says he was ‘quiet’, ‘easy going’

The homicide of a 30-year-old man found dead in Tacoma last week with a gunshot wound to the chest remains unsolved, according to police, and detectives are seeking tips to learn more about the shooting.

Mason Hall’s body was found by Tacoma Fire Department crews the morning of Dec. 12 lying near a power substation in the 1100 block of Cushman Avenue, in the city’s Hilltop neighborhood. He was determined to have been dead for several hours, and according to a bulletin shared by Tacoma Police Department, detectives believe he was shot at about 8:35 p.m. the previous night.

The victim’s girlfriend, Katrina Wedgeworth, told The News Tribune that she’s struggled to sleep since Hall’s death. She said the different possibilities of what could have happened to him keep running through her mind, and she questions whether Hall was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, if he somehow angered someone, or if the shooting was a case of mistaken identity. She said not knowing has been one of the most difficult things to deal with.

Wedgeworth said Hall wasn’t one to go looking for trouble, and he wasn’t someone to have enemies.

“He was just very quiet, usually happy,” Wedgeworth said. “He had just a few friends but was never mean or nasty to anybody. Even when he got mad, he would control his temper. He was easy going, nothing bothered him.”

Anyone with additional information about the shooting or those involved were asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.

Hall was born in California and grew up in the Tacoma area, according to Wedgeworth, who said she’s known the man since 2016. The couple met in a shelter for people experiencing homelessness. Wedgeworth now has a home in Lakewood, and she said she and Hall were living together with a roommate before his death.

The last time Wedgeworth saw Hall was Dec. 11. She was up all day after working the graveyard shift stocking shelves at a Dollar General the night before, and before she went to sleep in the late afternoon, Hall told her he was going to the garage to do something. When Wedgeworth woke up the next day, her roommate told her Hall said he was taking off for a while and that he took the garage door opener so he could get back inside when he came home.

Wedgeworth said it wasn’t unusual for Hall to leave on his own for a day or so. She tried calling him several times without luck. On Tuesday, she saw that she had a call from Hall’s phone. When she picked up, a detective was on the other end.

From her conversations with police, Wedgeworth said detectives don’t seem to have many leads, and it’s unclear whether Hall was shot in the area he was found or if he was moved there. A Tacoma police representative wasn’t immediately available to comment Wednesday morning. There is a tent encampment on the corner near where Hall was found, and Wedgeworth said she thinks someone there heard something.

“I understand when somebody hears gunshots they all duck in and don’t want to say anything,” Wedgeworth said. “I get that, but they’ve got to get it from my point of view. If it was somebody they cared about, they’d want somebody to say something.”