A Seattle man who admitted to a random daytime shooting won’t see the inside of a prison cell after a court ruled him not guilty by reason of insanity.
Cordell Goosby, originally from Illinois, ran up to a white Tesla stopped at a red light in the Belltown neighborhood on June 13, 2023, and fired multiple rounds from a stolen handgun, authorities said.
Eina Kwon, 34 and eight months pregnant with a daughter, was in the passenger seat and died from her injuries. Her husband, Sung Kwon, who was driving, got shot in the arm but survived. Doctors tried an emergency delivery, but the unborn baby girl didn’t make it either. The couple owned the Japanese restaurant Aburiya Bento House and were heading there to open up that morning. They also had a young son.
Goosby, who had a criminal record back in Illinois that kept him from legally owning guns, ditched the weapon and took off. Police caught him nearby, and he told officers right away that he did it, according to charging papers.
Mental health experts for both the defense and the prosecution agreed he was in the middle of a severe crisis and legally insane when it happened. King County prosecutors went along with that, and the not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity finding came down last Friday. Goosby will head to a state psychiatric hospital for treatment instead of prison. Any release later on would need approval from a public safety review panel and the court.
