Ex-prosecutor jailed in lawyer's shooting

Police said Jung, who has international legal and business connections, especially with South Korea, was critically wounded shortly after 9 a.m. yesterday as he drove into the parking lot of his office opposite Hidden Valley Sports Park north of downtown.


	Jung

Police said Jung was hit numerous times as he sat in his car. The gunman apparently shot through the driver's side window, shattering the glass of Jung's white Lexus sedan.

Jung was listed in critical but stable condition at Overlake Hospital in Bellevue late yesterday.

A witness to the shooting was able to give police a description of the suspect's car and its license number.

By 10:30 a.m., Everett police had picked up a Mill Creek resident and taken him to the Everett Jail, where Bellevue detectives questioned him later in the day.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer typically does not name suspects until they are charged with a crime.

Mark Roe, chief criminal deputy prosecutor for Snohomish County, confirmed the suspect is a man who served as a deputy prosecutor for the county from 1991 until he resigned at the end of 2000 to enter private law practice.

"He did District Court misdemeanor cases for a while, then was in general felony prosecution until he left," Roe said.

"He still has lots of friends here. We've seen a lot of him since he left because he taken on lots of cases. Of course, we're all shocked that he'd be involved in anything like what appears to have happened in Bellevue."

However, Roe said, "right now we certainly hope the man who was shot is OK, and we're thinking of his family as much as anything right now."


		Phil H. Webber / P-I
	Bellevue police investigate the shooting of lawyer Kevin Y. Jung in his white car in a Bellevue parking lot.

Roe said that through the years he has been in too many meetings with families who have lost members to criminal violence.

"At least they won't be having one of those meetings with this shooting, and we're glad about that," he said.

Jung is married and has two sons, ages 12 and 10.

The suspect had been scheduled to face Jung yesterday morning in a contempt hearing in a civil case, the Herald of Everett reported.

Jung represented the plaintiffs and was asking Snohomish County Court Commissioner Lester Stewart to sanction the defense for failing to respond to requests for information in a lawsuit involving two couples, Stewart told the Herald.

When they didn't show up, "I thought they'd resolved it," Stewart said, adding that he'd seen the two lawyers in court on the same case several months ago and there was no apparent animosity.

Jung's brother-in-law, Steve Min, said the shooting makes no sense, but that "there had been litigation going on" between Jung on one side of a case and the suspect on the other.

"They don't know each other," Min said, "except that they are involved on opposite sides. Just what this was over, though, I don't know."

Jung had represented the victim of a recent domestic dispute that turned into a murder-suicide in North Bend two weeks ago.

But, said Min, "that case was not involved here. No. I don't think so."

Jung was admitted to the Washington bar on June 5, 1989, and according to his Web site, has been concentrating on international business, corporate, real estate and immigration law. He travels regularly to Seoul, South Korea.

In August, Jung wrote a paper on South Korea's legal-services market that was published by the state bar association.

More headlines and info from Bellevue.