Relatives said Amare Geda was nearing the end of his overnight shift when he was shot and his Prius was taken.
SEATTLE, Wash. — The March 27 sentencing of Ne’iana Allen-Bailey brought Geda’s family back into a courtroom where they described the lasting damage from the 2023 killing of the 52-year-old rideshare driver, who was shot during an overnight shift and left in the street.
The 20-year prison term resolved the case against Allen-Bailey after her guilty plea to second-degree murder with a firearm enhancement, but the hearing was also a public accounting of who Geda was and what his absence has meant. Relatives spoke about a father, husband and provider whose routine work night ended in the SODO neighborhood just before dawn. The proceeding showed how the case had moved from a street shooting investigation to a sentencing hearing centered on family loss, community memory and a stolen Prius that prosecutors said became part of the defendant’s movements in the days after the killing.
Before the case became a set of exhibits and sentencing recommendations, it was Geda’s work schedule. He drove overnight for Uber and Lyft, and people who knew him said he had spent years balancing that work with a daytime airport job to support his family. On Aug. 8, 2023, prosecutors said, he had just completed a trip and stopped near First Avenue South and South Walker Street. The area was industrial and quiet at that hour. Allen-Bailey approached the parked Prius, opened the driver’s door and shot him, according to court records summarized in local coverage. Geda managed to get out of the vehicle and collapsed in the roadway. One account repeated during coverage of the sentencing said his wife had expected him home about 30 minutes later, a detail that gave the timeline a plain, domestic weight.
At the sentencing hearing, relatives and supporters filled out the story that police records could only sketch. A family statement read in court described the shock of learning that Geda was suddenly gone and the way that loss changed the lives of his wife and children at once. Another relative said the killing left a wife widowed, children fatherless and a wider community wounded. A fellow rideshare driver remembered Geda as a mentor and a person who showed care in practical ways, not just words. Those remarks helped explain why the case resonated beyond the criminal charge itself. Geda was not presented only as a victim in a file. He was described as the center of a family network and part of a work community made up of immigrants and drivers who often know each other through long hours, airport queues and late-night shifts.
Investigators later traced what happened after the shooting through surveillance and other evidence. Prosecutors said Allen-Bailey drove off in Geda’s light blue Prius and kept it for roughly two days. During that time, local reporting on arrest documents said, she went to a hair appointment in Kent, visited family in Skyway, bought gas in Renton and smoked marijuana. Police said she also threw away some of Geda’s belongings, including his phone. The car’s movements helped build the chronology after the shooting, and the case drew added attention because of the sharp contrast between the violence of the killing and the ordinary errands that followed. Authorities eventually recovered the Prius and arrested Allen-Bailey in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood.
The defense and prosecution offered sharply different ways to read the same facts. Prosecutors asked for a sentence above 23 years and argued that the killing was grave, deliberate and devastating in its effect. The defense asked for a shorter term, pointing to Allen-Bailey’s age at the time, her history of trauma, mental health struggles and substance abuse. Allen-Bailey, who was 18 when Geda was killed and 20 at sentencing, told the court she was sorry and understood that the pain would not go away. Judge Haydee Vargas imposed a 20-year sentence, below what prosecutors sought but above what the defense requested. The sentence followed a plea deal that amended the case from first-degree murder to second-degree murder with a firearm enhancement.
The broader context remained visible throughout the hearing. Rideshare drivers and their advocates have long said late-night work can leave drivers exposed, especially when they are parked, waiting or ending a trip in quieter parts of the city. In this case, officials said Allen-Bailey was not even a passenger. That detail was repeated in local coverage because it stripped away any pretense of an argument over service or a fare and left a more basic fact: a working driver was approached at random and shot. For Geda’s family, the public record may now be settled, but the emotional record is not. Their statements in court made clear that the sentence closed a prosecution, not the absence at home that followed the shooting.
The case stands with sentencing complete and a 240-month term imposed. Any further public movement would most likely come through appeal filings or later court records tied to the sentence.
Author note: Last updated April 20, 2026.