Shawn Laval Smith Stabs Brianna Kupfer Out On Bail Has Long History of Crime

Shawn Laval Smith, the suspected killer of 24-year-old UCLA grad student Brianna Kupfer, has a decade-long criminal history that spans both coasts.

Los Angeles police have launched a hunt for Smith, 31, after Kupfer was found stabbed to death at her furniture store job last week. Smith remained on the loose early Wednesday and police have said that he should be considered armed and dangerous.

Smith has a lengthy rap sheet with previous charges out of California, North Carolina and South Carolina. Online records show at least 11 arrests in Charleston, S.C., dating back to 2010, including a pending case for allegedly discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle on Nov. 13, 2019.

In this case, Smith was accused of firing a flare gun into a car occupied by a man and his child. Records show he was released on Nov. 23, 2019, after posting $50,000 bond. The last court action was March 2020.

A judge in Los Angeles has decided the man charged with murdering a UCLA student in a furniture store in Hancock Park is mentally fit to stand trial.

Brianna Kupfer, 24, was stabbed to death Jan. 13 as she worked alone inside the Croft House store on La Brea Boulevard. Authorities have said they believe she was attacked at random.

"She had strength and character and care and love," Kupfer's father Todd told NBCLA earlier this year.

The accused killer, Shawn Laval Smith, 32, has been jailed since January, charged with a single count of murder, and on Monday Smith was found competent to stand trial, according to the LA County District Attorney's Office.

Smith was arrested in Pasadena about a week after the killing after LAPD detectives publicized security video images and asked for the public's help in locating him.

A pretrial hearing was set for next week.

Last month the prosecutor who had been working on the case was suddenly reassigned within the LA County District Attorney's Office. John McKinney said he thought the move was retaliatory and feared it would negatively impact the prosecution.