TUKWILA, Wash. — Police said Tuesday they have a person of interest in custody related to the death of a RediCab driver whose body was left in the parking lot of the Westfield Southcenter Mall earlier this month.
The Tukwila Police Department has been investigating 34-year-old Nick Hokema's death after his body was found on Jan. 15.
The person of interest is in custody on unrelated charges with another agency, according to police.
Police said they also found Hokema's vehicle Jan. 28 in the Redmond Ridge neighborhood.
Hokema was a cab driver for RediCab and worked the night shift from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. His co-workers couldn't get a hold of him on Jan. 15, so they reached out to his long-time girlfriend, Nicole Sharkody.
She and Hokema envisioned a life together and were about to get engaged.
"There were texts that a friend sent me of a Facebook messenger posts of him asking her for advice for I think it was three different rings that he was going to choose from," said Sharkody.
On Jan. 15, the future she'd imagined was gone in an instant, and she's since left to wonder why.
One of Hokema's coworkers told her they had not heard from him and they were worried.
Sharkody could not reach him either. She called jails and hospitals with no luck. Then, she reached out to police in Tumwater, where the couple lives, to file a missing person's report.
A Tukwila police detective was in Tumwater and told Sharkody that Hokema was dead. The medical examiner said he was fatally stabbed, but where he was killed remains unknown.
"I gotta get answers for it," said Sharkody.
Because, right now, she said it makes no sense why somebody would kill him.
"Everybody loved him," she said. "He loved what he did.”
Hokema's death marks the second cab or rideshare driver to be killed on the job so far in 2024.
"Everybody goes through stages of grief. I'm starting to feel angry," said Nicole Sharkody, Hokema's longtime girlfriend. "I want definitive answers. And I want to make someone pay.”