Fred Meyer shooter evaluated at state mental hospital nearly 4 months after his arrest

Officials expect to know in two weeks if state doctors believe the man accused of shooting two people at the Richland Fred Meyer is able to stand trial.

It’s been nearly four months since Aaron Christopher Kelly allegedly shot and killed an Instacart worker inside the store and then critically wounded a Fred Meyer employee.

The legal proceedings against Kelly have been on hold since Feb. 23 when a judge ordered him sent to Eastern State Hospital for a mental health evaluation.

Staff at the Medical Lake facility finished an evaluation for the 40-year-old man just last week, his attorney Michael Vander Sys said in court on Wednesday.

He told the judge he didn’t know what the results of that evaluation are, but he hoped to know by June 8. Another hearing is scheduled for then.

Kelly, 40, hasn’t entered a plea to the charges of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.

Kelly’s attorneys have been fighting the lengthy delay, calling it a violation of his due process rights.

They tried to get a court order more than a month ago to get him evaluated sooner at the 317-bed inpatient psychiatric hospital.

Lisa Lydon with state Attorney General’s Office has argued that the hospital has been operating under constraints completely out of the hospital staff’s control, including issues around the COVID-19 pandemic.

February shooting

Kelly is accused of walking into the Fred Meyer on Wellsian Way about 11 a.m. on Feb. 7 and then pulling out a gun and shooting Justin Krumbah, an apparent stranger, several times after a brief conversation.

Then he opened fire on Hill near the customer service desk and wandered briefly in the store before leaving about seven minutes later, according to court documents.

The first officers on the scene tried to save Krumbah’s life, but the 38-year-old died at the store.

Mark Hill, 56, was taken to Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland after being shot three times.

While there aren’t many details about what Kelly did after leaving the store, Prosecutor Andy Miller previously said Kelly went and emptied his bank account.

He was arrested about 11 hours later driving on Interstate 90 near Sprague in Eastern Washington.

Contempt Order

Weeks later, Kelly’s attorney Vander Sys filed a motion March 22 after learning that his client wouldn’t get a mental health evaluation until May 16, according to court records.

In the motion, he argued the hospital violated the court order that Kelly be transported and admitted within seven days of receiving the order or 14 days of when it was signed.

“Here, (Eastern State Hospital) has exceeded the time limit set by the court,” Vander Sys wrote. “Neither (the state Department of Social and Health Services), nor a designated evaluator has moved the court for a time extension.”

He also pointed out that the delays were interfering with his client’s due process rights.

Eastern State Hospital serves Eastern Washington counties that need defendants evaluated and treated.

As of April 7, he was the 30th out of 50 in-custody defendants on the hospital’s waiting list, according to Dennis Wetzler, the administrative director of forensic services at Eastern State Hospital.

The state has been working at shortening the waiting list to get evaluated at the hospital for years following an agreement in federal court.

While they were near to meeting those goals last year, renewed restrictions because of the delta and omicron variants of COVID-19 slowed how many people could be evaluated.

The issue was further complicated by the fact that Kelly did not have a confirmed full dose of the COVID vaccine.

“Unfortunately, the omicron variant has hit ESH hard in January 2022,” Wetzler wrote.

The hospital saw the highest rates of people getting sick with the virus since the beginning of the pandemic, requiring them to cut the number of new admissions to 12 compared to 31 in the previous month.

At the same time, the number of defendants needing their services didn’t slow down.

This was further complicated by hospital staffing shortages.

Catching up

Since the height of the omicron infections, the hospital has been increasing the number of patients they can see, Wetzler said.

It admitted 24 in February and 24 in March.

“Consequently, the (hospital) inpatient wait list has been reduced from 80 ... defendants in January 2022 to 50 as of ... April 7, 2022,” he said in the court filing.

“Indeed, it would be extraordinary if ESH could achieve a net reduction of 10 ... defendants each month for the remainder of 2022.”

He estimated that if the hospital stays on this track, the waiting list could be in the single digits by September.

Though that would depended on whether another round of COVID infections hit the hospital.

Lydon, the assistant state Attorney General for the hospital, argued that the hospital couldn’t be found in contempt because that would require it to be willfully breaking the rules.

She also pointed out that the state hospitals are being monitored by the federal court system to avoid backlogs.

Benton County Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Stam ended up siding with Eastern State Hospital, and found that the hospital wasn’t intentionally delaying Kelly’s examination.

This story was originally published May 26, 2022 at 12:57 PM.