Twenty Years for Trafficking a Child on Aurora Avenue. The Corridor's Sixth Case Like It in Six Months.
U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour sentenced Shante Broady, 38, of Seattle, on July 7, 2026 to 20 years in federal prison, 15 years of supervised release, and mandatory sex-offender registration. A federal jury convicted him in April 2026 on five felony counts for sex-trafficking a minor and an adult woman through force, fraud, and coercion, transporting both women for prostitution, and unlawfully possessing a firearm. This is a confirmed conviction and sentence, not an allegation.
The case ran through Seattle’s North Aurora Avenue corridor — a stretch of U.S. Route 99 that federal prosecutors say traffickers themselves call “the track” or “the blade.” Broady is not an outlier there. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd said he is one of six defendants his office has prosecuted for sex trafficking in the last six months alone — on a corridor the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office says accounts for roughly 80% of the trafficking and exploitation cases it handles.
The sentencing lands one month after Seattle’s newest mayor, city attorney, and council leadership stood together to announce yet another investment in the same corridor — $7.5 million, an 83% increase in survivor-services spending since 2022, layered on top of $3.3 million spent in 2024 and $2 million budgeted for 2025. City officials have already conceded to their own council that the earlier spending’s progress is “slow” and that they could not produce metrics showing what it bought. Aurora Avenue has been a documented trafficking hub for years under a city and county run entirely by Democratic officials; a federal courtroom, not city or county enforcement, produced this outcome.
- 20 years — federal prison sentence for Shante Broady, for sex-trafficking a minor and an adult woman by force, fraud, and coercion — Source: DOJ/USAO Western District of Washington, July 7, 2026
- 15 years — of supervised release following the sentence, plus mandatory sex-offender registration — Source: DOJ/USAO Western District of Washington
- $7.5 million — new Seattle survivor-services investment announced June 2026 — an 83% increase since 2022 — Source: Seattle City Council, Office of the Mayor
- 427 — felony cases filed by the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office along the Aurora corridor, 2024 through May 2025 — Source: KOMO News
- ~80% — of the trafficking and exploitation cases the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office handles that tie back to Aurora Avenue, per Senior Deputy Prosecutor Alexandra Voorhees — Source: KOMO News
- 6th — sex-trafficking defendant Seattle's U.S. Attorney's Office has prosecuted in six months, per First AUSA Neil Floyd — Source: DOJ/USAO Western District of Washington
A federal jury convicted Shante Broady in April 2026 on five felony counts: sex trafficking of a minor, sex trafficking of an adult woman by force, fraud, and coercion, transportation of both women for the purpose of prostitution, and unlawful possession of a firearm. Judge John C. Coughenour handed down the sentence on July 7, 2026 — 20 years in federal prison, 15 years of supervised release to follow, and mandatory registration as a sex offender. Prosecutors said the judge pointed specifically to “the violence of events in the case” in justifying the length of the term.
“This area — which traffickers refer to as 'the track' or 'the blade' — is a dangerous hub for commercial sexual exploitation.”
Neil Floyd, First Assistant U.S. Attorney, Western District of Washington
Floyd’s office made clear this was not an isolated prosecution. “Shante Broady is one of six defendants involved in sex trafficking this office has prosecuted in the last six months,” he said — a plain statistical marker that Aurora Avenue is producing federal trafficking cases at a sustained pace, not as a one-off. FBI Seattle Special Agent in Charge W. Mike Herrington described how Broady found his victims in the first place.
“Mr. Broady scoured the internet and various social media platforms searching for vulnerable children and women to entice.”
W. Mike Herrington, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Seattle
Shante Broady was sentenced today to 20 years in federal prison for sex trafficking a minor and an adult woman on Seattle's Aurora Avenue corridor. He scoured the internet and social media searching for vulnerable children and women to entice — a stark reminder of the predators exploiting this corridor.
Court records lay out an 18-month arc. In November 2024, a former girlfriend first alleged Broady had assaulted her. By March 2025, he had paid for a plane ticket for a woman traveling from Canada — then, once she arrived, coerced her into prostitution through threats, violence, and a firearm. In April 2025, two Seattle women separately contacted the FBI. Investigators also identified a minor victim — a runaway from an out-of-state boarding school — whom Broady encountered on North Aurora Avenue; phone records introduced at trial showed he knew her age.
Broady was indicted on May 15, 2025, and pleaded not guilty. The jury did not believe his defense. He is far from the only defendant federal prosecutors have pulled off the same stretch of pavement this year — a KIRO 7 report from earlier in 2026 documented a separate crackdown effort in which six people were arrested on accusations of trying to exploit children along the corridor.
None of this is news to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. Between 2024 and May 2025, the office filed 427 felony cases tied to the Aurora corridor — including 99 assaults, 30 gun-possession charges, 44 burglaries, and 67 organized-retail-theft cases. Senior Deputy Prosecutor Alexandra Voorhees put the trafficking share of that docket in blunt terms.
“About 80% of the trafficking and exploitation cases my office handles tie back to Aurora.”
Alexandra Voorhees, Senior Deputy Prosecutor, King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office
Voorhees testified in Olympia in support of a bill, HB 2526, that would have raised patronizing a prostitute — buying sex — to a felony, targeting the demand side of exactly the exploitation her office spends most of its trafficking docket prosecuting. The bill died in the Washington Legislature in 2025. Prosecutors made the case for tougher penalties on buyers; state lawmakers declined to pass it.
The city’s own spending record on this corridor predates Broady’s sentencing by years. Seattle spent $3.3 million in 2024 and budgeted $2 million for 2025 on trafficking diversion and survivor services, according to KOMO News reporting on a city council briefing. When council members asked officials to show what that money had accomplished, the answer was an admission, not a metric: the work is “slow,” and city staff could not produce progress figures on demand.
That is more than $5.3 million across two budget years, spent on a corridor where a federal jury just finished proving a child was trafficked, where 427 felony cases piled up in 16 months, and where prosecutors say 4 in 5 of their trafficking cases originate. Residents fed up with the pace organized their own response — a march down the avenue demanding the city and county match the urgency of the crime itself.
In June 2026, a month before Broady’s sentencing, Mayor Katie Wilson (D) stood alongside Councilmember Debora Juarez (D), Council President Joy Hollingsworth (D), and City Attorney Erika Evans (D) to announce a new $7.5 million survivor-services investment — an 83% increase since 2022 — along with planned street closures on the corridor.
“The situation on Aurora is unacceptable. People are tired of hearing gunfire in the middle of the night.”
Mayor Katie Wilson · Office of the Mayor, June 2026
It is, by the city’s own accounting, at least the third distinct dollar figure attached to this same stretch of road in three years — $3.3 million, then $2 million, now $7.5 million — each announced with the same language of urgency the last one used. Whether the new investment produces measurable results, unlike its predecessors, is the open question the city has not yet answered.
A separate incident on the same corridor further undercut the city’s enforcement credibility this year. The Seattle Police Department publicized a claim that six people had been arrested in an Aurora Avenue trafficking crackdown. That claim was false: the arrests had actually been made in West Seattle, not on Aurora. An SPD Acting Lieutenant later apologized for the error. This incident is unrelated to the Broady prosecution — it is reported here only because it happened on the same corridor and speaks to how carefully the public should scrutinize official claims about enforcement there.
Seattle Police publicized a claim that six people were arrested in an Aurora Avenue trafficking crackdown. That claim was false — the arrests were actually made in West Seattle. An SPD Acting Lieutenant has apologized for the error.
Every civilian official with jurisdiction over the Aurora corridor — city, county, and state — is a Democrat. The prosecution and sentencing that finally took Shante Broady off the corridor came from the federal judiciary and a U.S. Attorney’s Office, not from the city or county officials who have spent years and millions of dollars on the same problem.
Katie Wilson (D) — Seattle Mayor. A self-identified progressive Democrat/democratic socialist, sworn in January 2026.
Erika Evans (D) — Seattle City Attorney.
Debora Juarez (D) — Seattle Councilmember, District 5, which covers the Aurora corridor.
Joy Hollingsworth (D) — Seattle Council President.
Leesa Manion (D) — King County Prosecuting Attorney, whose office filed the 427 felony cases and testified for the demand-side felony bill that died in Olympia.
Girmay Zahilay (D) — King County Executive.
Bob Ferguson (D) — Washington Governor, whose state legislature let HB 2526 die in 2025.
Neil Floyd — First Assistant U.S. Attorney, Western District of Washington (federal, nonpartisan). Judge John C. Coughenour — U.S. District Court (federal judiciary), who imposed the 20-year sentence.
Naming officials by office and party is not a rhetorical flourish; it is the political geography of the outcome. The city and county spent, promised, and re-promised money on Aurora Avenue for years under the officials listed above. It took a federal jury and a federal judge — institutions outside their control — to put one trafficker away for two decades.
Shante Broady will serve 20 years in federal prison, followed by 15 years of supervised release and lifetime sex-offender registration — a closed case. Aurora Avenue is not. First AUSA Neil Floyd’s six-defendants-in-six-months statistic means at least five more federal trafficking cases from this corridor are already moving through the same courthouse. The $7.5 million survivor-services investment announced in June 2026 has not yet produced the progress metrics city officials could not provide for the $3.3 million and $2 million that came before it. Whether this round of spending changes that record, or simply becomes the next line in a growing tally of promises, is the question Seattle and King County have not yet answered.
A federal jury convicted Shante Broady of trafficking a minor and an adult woman on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue. A federal judge gave him 20 years. He is the sixth trafficking defendant off that corridor in six months, on a stretch of road where King County prosecutors tie 80% of their trafficking docket, where a felony bill for buyers died in Olympia, and where Seattle has now promised $3.3 million, then $2 million, then $7.5 million without ever showing what the first two bought. The conviction is real accountability. The corridor is still waiting for the city and county's.
