Shane Goldsby was sentenced to an additional 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to a second-degree murder charge brought against him for murdering his cellmate.
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So, what exactly happened? Police said Goldsby, 26, first met his cellmate when he arrived at his cell at a Washington state corrections center in June 2020. Within hours of speaking with his cellmate, 70-year-old Robert Munger, he said he was convinced that Munger was the same man who raped his underage sister.
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According to an interview from KHQ with Goldsby last year, he said he had attempted to be transferred to a different cell, but his request was denied.
Goldsby claimed that Munger spoke to him in detail about how he had molested Goldsby's younger sister. Munger had been sentenced to 43 years in prison for child molestation and possession of child pornography just seven months earlier.
"He kept … giving me details about what happened and what he did. About the photos and videos of him doing this stuff, and it was building up," Goldsby said in the interview with KHQ.
Within hours Goldsby snuck up behind Munger and attacked him in the common area of the Airway Heights Corrections Center in Spokane County.
According to the Washington State Patrol, Goldsby knocked Munger down and stomped on his head repeatedly, the Washington Post reported.
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Munger died from complications caused by the attack days later in the hospital.
"I'm ashamed of my actions, I was put into a situation that I don't wish on nobody," Goldsby's lawyer read on his behalf at a hearing last week, the Post reported. "I got a lot of fixing to do."
Many have now started asking how Goldsby could have possibly been put in the same cell as his sister's rapist.
Policy for the state of Washington Department of Corrections says that inmates are "assessed for separation and facility prohibition concerns to ensure safety and facility security." It also says that those who "may be aggressors, victims of aggressors, or the threat to the orderly operation of a facility" should not be placed in the same cell.
According to the interview with KHQ in 2020, Goldsby thinks the corrections officers set him up after he led them on a high-speed chase in a police car in August 2017. In the pursuit, he had injured a Washington state trooper after ramming into his vehicle.
Goldsby was being pursued for an alleged stabbing, but ended up getting away that night, KATU reported.
"I completely humiliated the police," Goldsby told KHQ. However, it is not clear what punishment he received for the incident.
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Goldsby shared that "This stuff doesn't happen," when talking about his cellmate selection.
"You're talking the same institution, the same unit, the same pod in the same cell as this dude. That's like hitting the jackpot in the casino seven times," he said.
It was determined, however, that the corrections officers followed protocol when placing him in his cell.
"There is no evidence suggesting screening staff should have known about the conflict between Goldsby and Munger," the Washington State Patrol said in a report.
The report stated that corrections officers did not know about the potential conflict partly because Goldsby and his sister have different last names. It also says that Goldsby did not seek to be transferred from his cell.
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A witness quoted in the report, Randy Robinson, said he overheard the initial interactions between the two men and noted that they spoke about Goldsby's mother. He told investigators that they chatted like old friends.
A few hours later, Munger was struck in the head by Goldsby as he was ambushed in the common area. Reports say Munger hit his head on a steel seat while falling and was punched in the head 14 times, then kicked and stomped in the head repeatedly while lying on the floor unconscious.
State Sen. Mike Padden called for a probe into how the two men ended up in the same cell and said of Munger, "He probably would have died in prison, but he shouldn't have had to die like that," the Post reported.