SEATTLE — Her killing is described in court documents as senseless and random. Today, many are remembering the life of Seattle restaurant owner Eina Kwon one year after she was shot to death.
A bouquet of flowers marks the anniversary at the front door of her Belltown restaurant.
Surveillance footage from one year ago documents the chaos in the moments after the mid-morning shooting. Near Fourth and Lenora in downtown Seattle, Kwon and her husband were in a car when a man, who later admitted to police he pulled the trigger, fired into their car. Kwon, and the baby girl she was pregnant with, died at the scene and her husband was wounded.
“It really did make me sick to my stomach when I first heard it,” said neighboring business owner Patrick Hoyle.
New video, obtained by KING 5, shows the suspect Cordell Maurice Goosby in a police interview room in the hours after the shooting.
“I kind of blacked out with everything, so it was a blur,” Goosby heard during an interview with police.
He told police he thought he saw a gun and claimed a history of mental illness. Prosecutors would later call the killings “senseless” and “random.”
Now one year later, those who knew Eina Kwon describe her kindness. Hoyle shared a memory of Kwon's reaction to a minor car crash outside her restaurant, Aburiya Bento House on Western Avenue.
“When we had been backed into by a car right in front of her restaurant, and she was the first responder. She came out and helped our friend, pulled her into her restaurant and gave her water and waited until the paramedics arrived. She was a very good person,” Hoyle said.
A death a beloved business owner that sent shockwaves through the community – in the weeks that followed hundreds rallied in her name calling for change.
The man charged in Kwon’s killed was recently found competent to stand trial and faces up to 57 years in prison, if convicted. His case goes to trial in August.