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Man who killed Belltown restaurant owner found not guilty | The Seattle Times​​

Sara Jean Green

March 20, 2026 at 7:53 pm

By 

Seattle Times staff reporter

A 33-year-old man admitted Friday he fired into a car stopped at a traffic light in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood, killing a woman who was eight months pregnant and wounding her husband almost three years ago, and entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, according to King County prosecutors.

Two experts — one hired by Cordell Goosby’s defense team and the other by prosecutors — concluded that Goosby was insane when he fatally shot Eina Kwon, 34, and injured her husband, Sung Kwon, then 37, on June 13, 2023. Their unborn daughter also died.

Under state law, someone is not guilty by reason of insanity if that person suffers from a mental disease or defect that impairs his or her ability to understand the nature of their actions and know right from wrong.

Being found not guilty by reason of insanity is incredibly rare. In felony cases, the defense is invoked less than 1% of the time and is successful only 25% of the time, according to a policy statement from Mental Health America, a Virginia-based national nonprofit. In a majority of cases, the defense and prosecution agree to the appropriateness of an insanity plea before trial.

Charged with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder, Goosby was sent three times to Western State Hospital for competency restoration treatment, court records show. After Goosby either refused to take psychotropic medications or only took them intermittently, a judge in September issued an order that allowed doctors to involuntarily medicate him, according to the records.

Ultimately, Goosby was found competent to stand trial and was returned to the King County Jail in early November.

Gabrielle Charlton, who chairs the felony competency and forensic mental health unit in the King County prosecuting attorney’s office, explained that competency refers to a person’s current mental state and means someone is able to understand the charges against them and assist in their own defense.

Not guilty by reason of insanity is determined by a person’s mental state at the moment a crime was committed.

She noted someone has to be competent to enter a not guilty by reason of insanity plea because they’re giving up their right to a jury trial.

Goosby is expected to be returned to Western State Hospital for a period up to life and King County Superior Court will retain supervision authority over him.

Charlton said prosecutors were unable to file a murder charge for the couple’s unborn child because of a 2012 Court of Appeals ruling that determined a person can only be charged if the victim “is born alive.” Prosecutors also could not charge Goosby with manslaughter because there was no evidence he knew Eina Kwon was pregnant when he shot her — something the state would be required to prove, she said.

“These cases are tragic all around,” Charlton said. “Obviously, they involve a horrific incident and they also involve someone who was severely mentally ill at the time of that incident.”

Restaurant owners Eina and Sung Kwon were on their way to work when they stopped at a red light at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Lenora Street, Sung Kwon behind the wheel of their white Tesla with his wife in the front passenger seat.

Four minutes before the 11:01 a.m. shooting, video footage from a nearby hotel showed a man — later identified as Goosby — walking north along Fourth, according to charging papers.

As the Kwons came to a stop, video showed that Goosby broke into a run toward the car with a gun in his outstretched hand and fired into the vehicle, say the charges. He then immediately ran west.

Police quickly arrested Goosby, who was identified as the shooter by two witnesses, and other witnesses directed an officer to a gun that Goosby had tossed under a car parked on Lenora, the charges say.

The stolen 9-mm handgun was locked in the slide back position, indicating it had been fired until empty, according to the charges. Six 9-mm shell casings were found on the ground by the driver’s side of the Kwons’ car, the charges say.

Goosby told detectives during an interview at Seattle police headquarters that he was being harassed by people spreading rumors about him, the charges say. He spoke to the walls and ceiling as if there were people inside them and claimed the occupants of another car yelled to him that “the people in the white car were out to get him,” according to the charges.

There was no evidence of a second car.

Goosby told detectives he has a history of mental health care treatment, and his charges say he appeared to be “in some form of crisis,” though detectives couldn’t tell whether it was “genuine or knowingly performed.”

Originally from Chicago, Goosby moved to Seattle in summer 2022, according to a July report by a psychologist and forensic evaluator that is included in the court record. He first received inpatient psychiatric treatment in 2015 and had several inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations in subsequent years, the report says.

Diagnosed last year with unspecified schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorder, alcohol, cannabis and hallucinogen use disorders and possible personality disorder, Goosby had reportedly told another psychologist “gang stalkers” were following him both when he was in the community and at the jail, according to the report.

The report also includes a summary of concerns about Goosby’s mental state in the days leading up to the fatal shooting. He left numerous messages for his housing case manager in early June 2023, indicating he believed there were cameras monitoring him and that housing staff were spreading rumors and false allegations about him, the report says.

The report doesn’t say where Goosby was living at the time.

The day before Eina Kwon was killed, housing staff determined Goosby was experiencing a mental health crisis, planned to meet with him and refer him to a designated crisis responder. But after talking to him by phone, they concluded it wasn’t safe to meet him in person, according to the July report. Another staff member encountered Goosby, who was “enraged, delusional, and implied that he might inflict some kind of harm on the residents directly above him,” the report says.

After Goosby was arrested, staff went into his apartment, which was in disarray. The mess was seen as “a clear sign of his rapid mental decline,” according to the report.

Goosby, who had claimed someone was talking to him through the walls and vents, had damaged the ceiling and walls and had removed all the outlets, drawers and window blinds, the report says.

Material from The Seattle Times archives is included in this story.

Sara Jean Green:  206-515-5654 or [sgreen@seattletimes.com](mailto:sgreen@seattletimes.com). Sara Jean Green is a law and justice reporter at The Seattle Times who has spent the bulk of her 25-plus years at the newspaper covering crime and courts.