Lakewood police failed woman shot to death in ’22, suit says. ‘She didn’t have to die’
The Lakewood Police Department is being accused of failing to protect a woman in the days before she was fatally shot, allegedly by an ex-boyfriend she feared.
Gloria Choi, 33, died Jan. 2, 2022, after being rammed off the road in Lakewood and shot at more than 14 times while on the phone with 911. Her ex-boyfriend, William Lee Rickman, was charged with aggravated first-degree murder in a case that’s ongoing. Rickman’s attorney, Lance Hester, said Thursday he didn’t immediately have his client’s approval to provide comment.
In the lawsuit filed Sept. 6 in Pierce County Superior Court, Choi’s estate alleges that Lakewood police knew Rickman posed an imminent threat to Choi and had repeatedly violated a no-contact order, yet didn’t arrest him.
“Gloria’s death was completely preventable,” attorney Meaghan Driscoll, who is representing the Choi estate, said in an interview. “She didn’t have to die if people had done their job.”
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages to be proven at trial on behalf of Choi’s estate and her son — 8 years old at the time of his mother’s death — for significant pain, suffering, emotional anguish, economic loss and medical expenses, among other losses, suffered because of Choi’s killing.
John Justice, an attorney representing the city of Lakewood and its police department in the suit, said that neither could comment on litigation matters.
The January 2022 document that laid out the probable cause to charge Rickman, with whom Choi had recently broken up, noted that some Lakewood officers who responded to the scene of Choi’s shooting were familiar with her because of domestic-violence incidents involving Choi and Rickman.
Four incidents were reported in Lakewood between Dec. 30 and Dec. 31, 2021, only days before Choi’s death. Several others occurred in the preceding month in Thurston and Lewis counties, according to the charging document, and on Dec. 1, 2021, Rickman was barred from contacting Choi by court order.
In the month before she was killed, Choi reported to Tumwater police that Rickman hadn’t returned her vehicle for several days after they broke up; she locked herself in the bathroom of a Centralia coffee shop after Rickman’s BMW slowly pulled up and parked; and Rickman violated the no-contact order when he begged Choi from inside a mall in Olympia to drop the order, according to the charging document.
On Dec. 30, 2021, Choi’s truck was broken into, one tire was slashed and two backpacks and laptops were stolen while she ate dinner with a co-worker at a Lakewood sushi restaurant. Her co-worker’s passenger-side tires also were slashed that day in the parking lot of the hotel where they worked, and the driver-side tires were slashed the next day, with surveillance video showing Rickman in the parking lot, the charging document said.
“Defendant violated its duties to protect Gloria by allowing Rickman to hunt for and kill her when Defendant had direct knowledge he was increasingly violent, was armed and actively stalking Gloria, and should be apprehended,” the lawsuit reads. “Defendant violated the statutory duty to safely enforce the protective order sought and obtained by Gloria through the judicial system.”
“Defendant casually undertook the obligation in a disinterested and nonchalant manner, which resulted in Gloria venturing from her home with the false promise of security having called law enforcement repeatedly for help while Rickman grew emboldened by his ability to carry out a days-long rampage of stalking, violence, and vandalism without police intervention,” it continued.
Driscoll said that their investigation so far had shown that the department and its officers hadn’t taken domestic violence seriously and were cavalier in responding to a dangerous situation.
Two days following Choi’s death, detectives received a call from a friend of hers who had met with Choi in November 2021 when Choi was considering breaking up with Rickman, according to the charging document.
“Choi told the friend she was fearful of breaking up with Rickman because he told her if she broke up with him, he would kill her,” the document said.
Rickman had an extensive criminal history in California, including domestic-violence convictions, according to the document.
This story was originally published September 18, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
