Updated July 2026. A wrongful death lawsuit reported this month has confirmed what this post argued in March. The full timeline of the failure is now a matter of public record.
There was public outrage when Cordell Goosby was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a psychiatric hospital instead of prison. Before addressing that two things need to be said. Some of that outrage is racially motivated. The instinct to send a Black man to prison rather than seek treatment. Had the perpetrator been white. Many of those same voices would not react so strongly. That applies to some people not all.
Now let's turn to those whose outrage is genuine and not rooted in racial bias. To those people. I say your outrage is misplaced. It should not be focused on where Cordell Goosby was sent. It should be focused on the fact that the deaths of Eina Kwon and her unborn daughter Evelyn could have been prevented. I believe those deaths could have been prevented. And that is where our energy must go.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
We cannot change what happened after the crime. We cannot change where Goosby was sent. What we can change is the conditions that allowed this tragedy to happen in the first place.
What the Lawsuit Revealed
On June 13, 2023 just before 11 in the morning. A gunman fired into a car stopped at a light in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood. Eina Kwon 34 years old and pregnant was killed. So was her unborn daughter. Whom she and her husband had already named Evelyn. Her husband Sung Kwon sitting beside her was shot in the arm. He now lives in Indiana with their son Ethan. As part of his insanity plea Goosby acknowledged committing the act.
In a wrongful death lawsuit against the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. Reported by The Seattle Times on July 9, 2026. Sung Kwon alleges that the agency was providing case management services and housing to Cordell Goosby. And failed to act as his mental health collapsed in front of them.
Here is the timeline the lawsuit describes. Goosby was enrolled in the homelessness authority's program in the fall of 2022. At that time staff observed nothing concerning. After his sister died. He went to the psychiatric unit at Harborview Medical Center multiple times in late 2022 and early 2023. Reporting auditory hallucinations and paranoia. Also both suicidal and homicidal thoughts.
In February 2023 the homelessness authority placed him in an apartment near the Pacific Science Center. The agency furnished it. The agency paid his rent. It did not transfer his case to its housing stability section.
As his condition worsened Goosby asked the agency for help. He met with a supervisor. That supervisor later told evaluators. He did not regard Goosby's statements about committing drive by shootings as serious threats. The lawsuit notes that the basis for that judgment is unknown. By early June 2023 his apartment managers were complaining about him regularly. In a meeting with agency staff. He described paranoid delusions and admitted to fighting with strangers. Behaved with increasing aggression and again talked about shooting people. Staff took no steps.
The day before the shooting a Monday. Goosby told a staff member he needed to leave Seattle fast before he hurt someone. He alternated between crying and rage. The staffer went to the agency's designated point person to begin the process for an involuntary psychiatric evaluation. That person said he could not see Goosby that day. He would get to it on Wednesday. Eina Kwon was killed on Tuesday.
The Kwon family's attorney Julie Kline, said the agency's managers "buried their head in the sand." The homelessness authority has said it is aware of the complaint. Called the killing a horrific tragedy. And stated that it cannot comment on specific allegations while the matter is in active litigation. But the underlying facts of what the agency knew and when. Are now on the public record.
He Was Not Sleeping on the Street. That Is the Point.
Understand what this case actually shows. Because it is not what most people assume. Cordell Goosby was not an anonymous man on a sidewalk whom no one had ever reached. He was a client of a taxpayer funded government agency. He had a caseworker. He had a supervisor. He had an apartment furnished with the rent paid. By the standards of the Housing First model Cordell Goosby was a success story. Housing had been delivered. A successful story many would say. A success story that ends with a woman and her baby dead.
This is the failure at the center of Housing First. The model treats housing as the solution rather than as the starting point. It offers services but cannot require them. It provides an apartment and calls the problem solved. And according to the complaint this agency had no protocols and no training. For front line staff on when to alert law enforcement or trigger a crisis response when a client posed a danger. So when a man with documented auditory hallucinations, paranoia and homicidal ideation walked into a government office and begged for intervention before he hurt someone. The system that was paying his rent scheduled him for Wednesday. Housing First policy had housed him. It had not treated him. And it could have been did not stop him. Giving a severely mentally ill man keys to an apartment and walking away is not compassion. It is abandonment with a lease attached.
This Is Not an Isolated Case
Cordell Goosby had a documented history of mental illness. This was a random attack one of many in cities across the country. In Chicago Lawrence Reed is charged with pouring a flammable liquid on Bethany MaGee and setting her on fire aboard a CTA train. He had been arrested more than seventy times across three decades and was on pretrial release with electronic monitoring at the time. In North Carolina Iryna Zarutska was stabbed in the neck and killed on a light rail train. In a random attack by a man with a long documented history of mental illness. Different cities. Different victims. The same failure. In each case a system that knew something was wrong. And had no legal mechanism or no will to act before someone died.
How These Deaths Could Have Been Prevented
The answer lies in reforming our approach to homelessness and mental health.And it is the core of this campaign's platform. The Homeless Recovery and Rehabilitation Act would require that federal homelessness programs classify people by the actual cause of their homelessness. Addiction, severe mental illness or economic hardship. Each demands a different response. A man with untreated psychosis does not need the same intervention as a family that lost a paycheck. Under this framework Goosby would have been identified at intake as a person with severe mental illness. Not simply as a person without an apartment.
The State Mental Health Restoration and Oversight Act . Would change the civil commitment laws that make cases like this inevitable. Right now Washington law effectively requires that someone be an imminent danger before the state can act. A man saying he is going to shoot people repeatedly over months.It is apparently not imminent enough. That standard needs to change. With judicial review, legal representation and regular reassessment built in so that the power is never abused.
Both bills would fund the construction of secure and humane. Professionally staffed long term treatment facilities. Not prisons. Not the streets. Real care for people who cannot safely live on their own. It would also create thousands of jobs that cannot easily be replaced by artificial intelligence or robotics.
And there is one more failure in this case that has gone almost unmentioned. According to police as reported by KING 5. Goosby used a stolen gun found near the scene. He was legally prohibited from possessing any firearm because of his Illinois criminal record. The law already said this man could not have a gun. A stolen gun found its way to him anyway. Because roughly 200,000 firearms are stolen in this country every year . And stolen guns are the single largest source of weapons used in street crime. This campaign's proposed federal Secure Storage Law requiring certified lock boxes and gun safes. With mandatory theft reporting exists to shrink exactly that pipeline.
→ Read the full text of both bills at Project 2029
The Choice in This Election
We live in a world where anyone can be randomly attacked and killed. We cannot accept this as normal. It is the duty of every generation to build a better future for the next. We are currently failing that duty. If we do not act we will build a dark future for the next generation.
Kincaid is the only candidate in this race with real solutions for crime and homelessness. The only one with a focus on public safety. The only one who puts people first instead of a political agenda. Suzan DelBene has been in office for more than thirteen years. Are you better off now than you were thirteen years ago? Does your future look better? Has homelessness gone down or up? Will you and your children have jobs or will you be replaced by artificial intelligence?
And do not forget that Suzan DelBene is not just any member of Congress. She holds a top leadership role in the Democratic Party. She is Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Responsible for coordinating the strategy to win House elections. Under her leadership Donald Trump became President again and Republicans won control of the White House and Congress. How is her strategy working out for you so far? In this election, the people have a clear choice. Build a better future with Kincaid. Stay on the same path toward a dark future with Suzan DelBene. Or elect the socialist Hunter Gordon and let him burn the economy down. Eina Kwon and her daughter Evelyn deserved a system that worked. So does everyone else.
Links
Man Charged in Murder of Pregnant Woman Found Not Guilty by Insanity -- KING 5, March 2026
Kincaid's Strategy to End Homelessness
The Tragic Failure Behind the Lawrence Reed / Bethany MaGee Case
Taxpayer Funded Sanctuary: A Safe House for Dangerous Criminals
Paid for by Kincaid for Congress.