Jury convicts murderer of Brianna Kupfer years after killing at Hancock Park furniture store

Jurors convicted a man of murder in the stabbing death of 24-year-old Brianna Kupfer while she was working at a furniture store in Hancock Park nearly three years ago.

Shawn Laval Smith, 34, has been found guilty of first-degree murder for the Jan. 13, 2022 killing, a crime prosecutors say was motivated by a broader hatred for women. He went inside the store where Kupfer was working that day after approaching women working at other businesses in the central Los Angeles neighborhood, LA County Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian told the court during his trial.

"He's hunting for a woman alone and he hasn't found her," Balian said, describing Smith's movements that day.

Balian said Smith was looking for "a woman who's alone, a woman who's vulnerable, a woman who's isolated, a woman who's unsuspecting." 

Then, he found Kupfer working by herself at a boutique furniture store, located in the 300 block of North La Brea Avenue.

"Brianna Kupfer was about to become the ultimate target of his vile and disgusting and all mind-consuming hatred of women," Balian said.

During the trial, Balian said Kupfer had no idea she would become the target of Smith when she went into work that morning. As he described Kupfer preparing her lunch and getting ready, Balian told jurors Smith was also getting ready — grabbing a knife and pulling a hooded sweater over his head "so he'll be unidentifiable."

"He's not packing a lunch," Balian said. "He's arming himself with a deadly instrument. That's what he was doing that morning... he's getting ready to begin his hunt. Meanwhile, what's Brianna doing?"

"Well, she's expecting a normal day at work," Balian said. "She parks, she goes in. She's preparing to do what a normal employee does that day."

He brutally stabbed the UCLA graduate 46 times, authorities said.

Investigators identified him as the suspect in the days after as a reward for information leading to an arrest rose to $250,000, a combination of funding from the city of LA and private donations.

"We will find this vicious criminal, we will arrest him and we will get him prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," L.A. City Councilman Paul Koretz said at the time, upon introducing a motion at a city council meeting to create the initial reward.

Smith was arrested in Pasadena and later charged with murder.

On Tuesday, a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder along with special allegations of murder while lying in wait and that he used a deadly and dangerous weapon, a knife, during the commission of the crime. 

Jurors reached the verdict after just over an hour of deliberations. 

"I would say it's an overwhelming sense of relief," Kupfer's father, Todd Kupfer, told reporters after the trial ended. "This has obviously been a brutal couple weeks for us."

Meanwhile, her mother, Lori Kupfer, said she was grateful others would not have to face Smith's violence.

"Justice will never be served because our daughter's not alive," she said. "But the DA did a wonderful job, and the jury really listened to the evidence that they heard. And we are very, very happy that they understood the law and made the correct decisions."

"As I said, it's not just," she said of the verdict. "But it will protect the public, which is what I think it's meant to do."

A sanity phase of the trial is set to begin Oct. 2. If the judge determines Smith was sane at the time, he faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

"When you send your children off to work, or when they go off to work to be able to pay their bills and continue their education, you don't ever expect them to be — at 1:30 in the afternoon, at work — you just don't ever expect that phone call we got from the sheriff's department," Lori Kupfer said, before her husband spoke of their daughter's love of life.

"She loved living. She loved learning. She loved people. She loved the world," he said.