Man gets life for killing UCLA student in furniture store

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (AP) — After being found sane at the time of the crime, a transgender man who killed a UCLA student and stabbed her 46 times at a Hancock Park furniture boutique was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without option Parole.

Shawn Laval Smith, 34, was convicted Sept. 10 of first-degree murder for the Jan. 13, 2022, killing of 24-year-old Brianna Kupfer.

After a brief hearing Wednesday morning that included an evaluation or reports from two doctors, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mildred Escobedo concluded that Smith was sane at the time of the crime, which was captured in a chilling audio recording. This decision gave the judge permission to proceed with sentencing.

In addition to his murder conviction, the jury at trial also found true a special circumstance charge of murder in wait, along with the allegation that the defendant used a knife in the commission of the crime. Smith had pleaded both not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity, which necessitated the reason phase of the case, for which the defendant waived a jury trial so that Escobedo could determine whether he was still sane at the time.

Kupfer was attacked while she was working alone at the Croft House in the 300 block of North La Brea Avenue, near Beverly Boulevard.

In his closing argument at the trial, Assistant District Attorney Habib Balian described Smith as a man who “hated women” and went from store to store while “looking for a woman alone” and then posed as a customer when he caught Kupfer doing so how he worked her own insides

“She wasn’t alert,” the prosecutor said of the victim. “He was lying in wait for his perfect target… She had no idea what he planned to do with her.”

On a digital audio recorder left at the scene and still playing when police arrived, the attacker can be heard telling the woman he was “not going to hurt her” and then ordering her to “just lie on the ground “. The woman can be heard screaming, and her attacker then tells her: “It's over, it's over, it's over, it's over, bitch.”

Smith left the young woman bleeding on the floor, left the store through a back door and walked calmly down an alley before disappearing between two apartment buildings, Balian told jurors.

In his haste to leave the bloody crime scene, the defendant left behind a knife with a bent blade, as well as a knife sheath and the audio recorder, all of which contained his DNA, the prosecutor said.

In a recording made about two and a half weeks earlier and subsequently found on the recorder, Smith can allegedly be heard saying, “I don't like bitches” and vowing to “destroy everything.”

Defense attorney Robert Haberer countered that the December 2021 recording did not prove there was a motive for murder for the man, who he described as a “homeless drifter” who roamed commercial stores to talk to people behind the counter.

Smith's lawyer called the recording a “slightly incoherent rant full of obscenities” and “not exactly some sort of manifesto” or “smoking gun” for a “horrific murder two and a half weeks later.”

“The fact that he was upset about women is not a warning sign,” Haberer told the jury about the older recording, describing it as a “tantrum against himself” in which he “let off steam.”

Smith's attorney argued that it would require a “Grand Canyon leap of logic” to conclude from the recording made about two and a half weeks before the killing that the man he repeatedly referred to as “the suspect” had the intention at the time , to kill someone.

“The decision to attack Brianna Kupfer was instantaneous… This was in no way planned,” the defense attorney said.

The woman's body was found on the floor by a woman who came into the store with her boyfriend and then rushed outside to call 911.

Copper was declared dead in the store.

Smith – who gave police a false name – was taken into custody six days later after a Pasadena resident called police to report a sighting of the defendant after being offered a reward, prosecutors said.

The defendant has been behind bars since his arrest.

The judge revoked Smith's right to act as his own attorney during the trial following a contentious hearing in June 2023 in which he hurled profanities at the judge in his first appearance before her and abruptly left his seat in the courtroom courtroom in downtown Los Angeles.

By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH, City News Service