(Updated Monday with official confirmation of Roxbury victim’s ID)
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
The man shot and killed at 28th/Roxbury Thursday night is reported to have been 45-year-old Ronald Moore, best known as the veteran rapper Gonzoe,
There is still no official confirmation of this – the King County Medical Examiner’s Office has not released the victim’s ID yet – but we have confirmed that Gonzoe lived in West Seattle.
Word of his death started circulating last night, starting with a report on the entertainment-news site VladTV (which cited WSB for details on Thursday night’s crime scene/investigation). There’s no question that Gonzoe, who came to fame in the mid-’90s as a member of the group Kausion – has died; family, friends, and fans are mourning him. But what we’ve spent hours trying to find is an open citation of who actually linked his death to the Thursday night shooting. Because so many people have called this to our attention, we’re publishing this story with what we do know, as well as what we don’t.
Though his online ID cites Los Angeles as his base, we have confirmed that Gonzoe lived in West Seattle, at least part of the time. First word came from a person who contacted us, identifying themselves as a longtime friend, saying that the rapper moved here a few years ago and has family here; this person said they’d confirmed the death circumstances by talking to a relative. Checking various types of online databases in which names and addresses can potentially be matched, we found confirmation in 2020 and 2021 records from a traffic case that he had a Morgan Junction address. Looking through Gonzoe’s Instagram posts – in which he often gave short pep talks to his followers – we found one video dated July 13th that was clearly made here in West Seattle (the beachfront scenery shows Vashon and Blake Islands).
Back to online information, his friend Boskoe 100, with whom Gonzoe founded a boxing league called Glovez Up Gunz Down, talked about the shooting in a video. He said he was told that Gonzoe was getting ready for a “late-night studio session” when he went to the Roxbury Lanes restaurant to pick up some food, got into an argument with someone, and that person followed him out and shot him.
The King County Sheriff’s Office continues investigating the Thursday night shooting but hasn’t released a report on the circumstances; what we cited in our coverage comes from what we learned at the scene and via emergency-radio communication that night, as well as KCSO confirming the victim’s death Friday morning.
ADDED MONDAY AFTERNOON: Via King County Public Health/Medical Examiner’s Office, we have confirmed that the Roxbury shooting victim was indeed Ronald Moore/Gonzoe. His death was ruled a homicide, caused by a gunshot wound to the chest. No updates so far from KC Sheriff’s Office investigators.
(Photo: @TheRealGonzoe)
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