He conspired to rob woman in set-up drug deal, then shot her dead. Here’s his sentence
A 29-year-old man who shot and killed a woman lured to a South Tacoma parking lot where she expected to sell $1,200 worth of methamphetamine was sentenced Friday to nearly 66 years in prison.
Cody Allen Smith was convicted in February in a six-day jury trial of first- and second-degree murder in the Sept. 22, 2021, death of Soohui Kim, 42. A suspected accomplice, Michael Deda, was accused of arranging the fake drug sale so Smith and Michael Freeman, another suspected accomplice, could rob her.
But within minutes of Kim parking at an apartment complex in the 4500 block of South Puget Sound Avenue, Smith and Freeman approached her vehicle, briefly spoke with her and fired gunshots from both sides of her vehicle, according to court records. Kim began to drive away, but she quickly ran off the road and hit a utility pole.
A passenger in Kim’s SUV was grazed by a bullet, and he went to a nearby convenience store, where he called 911. Officers responded and found Kim slumped over the steering wheel. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The prison sentence Pierce County Superior Court Judge Michael Schwartz imposed, 790 months, was about 15 years longer than what prosecutors had recommended. Smith’s murder and assault convictions each carried an additional 10 years due to firearm sentencing enhancements.
Jurors also found Smith guilty of first-degree assault for wounding Kim’s passenger, as well as first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm, first-degree attempted robbery and conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery.
Smith was sentenced for only some of those offenses due to the way prosecutors charged him. The attempted robbery conviction was vacated because his first-degree murder charge was predicated on this crime. The conspiracy to commit robbery conviction was vacated because the facts of that crime and the attempted robbery were “sufficiently intertwined,” prosecutors wrote in court filings. And his second-degree murder conviction was vacated due to double jeopardy.
Smith is the first to be convicted in the case. Deda’s trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday, and Freeman has a trial readiness status hearing set for April 5, with a jury trial scheduled to begin the next week.
It’s unclear why Deda would have set up Kim to be robbed or why it ended in gunfire. Prosecutors wrote in a trial brief for Smith that confidential informants and other street sources fed rumors to Tacoma detectives that indicated the killing was revenge for selling a lethal dose of drugs to Deda’s wife. But prosecutors said the woman didn’t die of a drug overdose.
According to court records, Deda was a new customer to Kim. The passenger who was with her later told detectives he knew Kim had “Clear” with her, a form of meth, and it seemed to him she was trying to vet Deda, whom she knew as “Mike,” before agreeing to sell him drugs.
The night before the shooting, Kim picked up the passenger, a friend she’d known for about a year. According to the probable cause document, the two spent some time at a casino before going to meet up with Deda. The friend told police he fell asleep in the car and woke up as Kim was parking on the street about 4:40 a.m.
“Once there, he saw a dark figure behind their vehicle. He and the victim remained in the vehicle and he then heard four shots,” prosecutors wrote in charging papers.
Surveillance footage helped investigators identify Smith and Freeman as the suspected shooters. According to court records, a camera across the street from the shooting scene showed both approach Kim’s vehicle shortly before five to six gunshots are heard. Detectives also placed all three defendants’ cellphones in the same area at the time of the shooting.
This story was originally published March 19, 2024 at 6:15 AM.
