She repeatedly called police for help before Lakewood murder. Now her killer is sentenced
A 48-year-old man convicted of aggravated murder for following his ex-girlfriend from her workplace in Lakewood, running her off the road and killing her in a hail of gunfire was sentenced Friday to life in prison.
A jury convicted William Lee Rickman of aggravated first-degree murder Dec. 7 after an eight-day trial and about two hours of deliberations, according to court records. Prosecutors alleged that over a month in late 2021, Rickman followed and harassed his ex-girlfriend, 33-year-old Gloria Choi, in violation of a court order not to contact her.
The only punishment available for Judge Edmund Murphy to impose was life in prison without possibility of parole because of the severity of Rickman’s crime. Jurors made special findings that Rickman was armed with a firearm and that the murder was aggravated due to the no-contact order and because Rickman shot her from his truck or nearby.
Deputy prosecuting attorney Greg Greer said during the sentencing hearing that Rickman’s crime was all about himself.
“It’s nothing more than selfishness that this defendant took her life,” Greer said.
Choi broke up with Rickman two months before her murder, records state. She worked at a Lakewood hotel just blocks from where she was shot the evening of Jan. 2, 2022. She repeatedly called police, seeking help from law enforcement in Pierce, Thurston and Lewis counties while Rickman continued to harass her.
The evening of the murder, Choi called 911 at about 7:25 p.m. and told dispatchers she’d been in a vehicle collision with her boyfriend, according to prosecutors’ trial brief. She sounded frantic, prosecutors wrote, and she soon said her boyfriend was armed with a gun. Choi pleaded with the dispatcher to come now, followed by “hysterical” screams, the sound of pounding and a barrage of gunfire.
Greer said Friday that the call recorded Choi crying out in Korean, and that in her last moments, knowing what was about to happen, she called out for the person who loves her most, her mother.
“I hadn’t heard too many things like that 911 call,” Murphy said in court.
Lakewood Police Department officers responded to the 6100 block of 112th Street West and found Choi slumped over the steering wheel of a 2019 Ford Ranger, records state. The truck was pushed against a telephone pole.
Choi was taken to Madigan Army Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead. An autopsy report later found she was shot 10 times, mostly in the back and the arm.
Detectives found 14 bullet defects in the woman’s truck and retrieved 12 bullet casings from the scene. Some officers reportedly recognized the victim because of recent domestic-violence confrontations involving Rickman. According to court records, at least 11 incidents were reported in barely a month across three counties.
A warrant for Rickman’s arrest was issued three days after Choi’s murder, and he was arrested Jan. 7 in Humboldt County, California. He was extradited to Washington state about a month later for arraignment, and the defendant has remained in custody without bail since.
Rickman has a criminal history in California. According to court records, he was convicted of two felonies and four misdemeanors from 1993 to 2009, including domestic-violence offenses.
After Choi was killed, one of her ex-boyfriends called detectives to describe a phone conversation he had with Rickman two days before the murder. Rickman allegedly complained Choi left him for another man and said, “I’m gonna take care of it tonight. I’m gonna be on the news,” prosecutors wrote in charging papers. Choi’s ex-boyfriend assumed Rickman planned to beat up the new boyfriend. Then he heard Choi had been killed.
Attorneys representing Choi’s estate filed a lawsuit in September against the City of Lakewood and its police department. It alleged that police knew Rickman posed an imminent threat to Choi and had repeatedly violated the no-contact order but didn’t arrest him.
Choi’s domestic-violence murder was preventable, according to attorneys from Tacoma-based Connelly Law Offices. Attorney Meaghan Driscoll previously told The News Tribune that Choi’s death was preventable, and she didn’t have to die if officers had done their jobs.
The lawsuit is pending. The plaintiff’s attorneys didn’t respond to requests for comment on how any information that came out at Rickman’s trial might affect the civil case. The suit seeks unspecified damages to be proven at trial on behalf of Choi’s estate and her son, who was 8 years old at the time of his mother’s death.
Attorneys representing the City of Lakewood filed an answer to the plaintiff’s civil complaint Sept. 18, admitting only that the city provides law enforcement services through the Lakewood Police Department, and the basic facts of Choi’s murder.
The city denied that its police force had “direct knowledge” that Choi was in imminent danger from her ex-boyfriend, according to the court document, and it denied that its conduct placed the woman in harm’s way and ultimately led to her death.
Attorneys for the City of Lakewood also specifically denied eight other allegations. It said it didn’t have information to admit or deny the others. Attorneys for the city did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
Days before Choi’s death, officers received a call reporting that Rickman had followed Choi, broken into her truck, slashed a tire and stole two backpacks and laptops 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, according to charging documents. The city denied that at that point police knew or should have known that Rickman had repeatedly violated a no-contact order and had become increasingly brazen and persistent in trying to reach Choi.
