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The homeless man who allegedly killed 24-year-old UCLA graduate student Brianna Kupfer was busted for biting a cop while being taken into custody outside San Francisco last year and should have been extradited out of California after the arrest, according to a new report.
Career criminal Shawn Laval Smith had been freed on a $50,000 bond for firing a weapon at an occupied car in Charleston, SC in November of 2019. He illegally left the state when the coronavirus jammed up the court system and attacked a California officer last January, according to an arrest report obtained by Fox News.
His lawless streak culminated last week when he allegedly entered a Los Angeles furniture store where Kupfer was working alone and stabbed her to death in broad daylight for no apparent reason.
In January of 2021 Smith, 31 was arrested for vandalizing a stranger’s car in Daly City, Calif., according to the report. He lashed out at arresting officers after an outburst in the back of a police cruiser, the outlet said.
“I tried to speak to him, but he was just yelling over my words and not listening,” officer Jay Mulitauopele reportedly wrote. “Then Smith started yelling ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!’”
The suspect then started kicking the cruiser’s door while screaming, prompting Mulitauopele and two other cops to take him out of the car and try to restrain him, the article said.
“He moved his head quickly and bit my right index finger latching on with full force,” Mulitauopele reportedly wrote. “I screamed in pain.”
Smith’s attack reportedly drew blood from Mulitauopele’s finger and left it imprinted with teeth marks.
Cops had responded to a restaurant after the suspect was accused of jumping on the hood of a worker’s car, leaving a large dent that cost almost $4,000 to repair, the article said. Smith reportedly did not know the victim.
His alleged rampage continued outside a nearby coffee shop, where Smith was accused of accosting two strangers sitting on a bench, stealing one of their phones and trying to fight them, according to the outlet.
Smith — who was living in a San Francisco homeless shelter and was in possession of a loaded flare gun and knife — was charged with three felonies and was sentenced to 133 days in jail, the article stated. He subsequently ignored the terms of his probation, and a warrant was issued for his arrest late last year, according to the report.
The South Carolina native had a modus operandi of attacking police officers and strangers, and had a rap sheet of at least 11 arrests in his home state, according to the article. Smith reportedly pleaded guilty to assaulting an officer after a 2016 arrest in Charleston. He had also been charged with firing a flare gun into a stranger’s vehicle as a toddler sat in the back seat in 2019.
Smith was freed on $50,000 bond in connection with the “road rage incident” but he was banned from leaving South Carolina under the conditions of his release, Fox News reported. It was unclear why California authorities did not contact Charleston jailors to revoke his bond and take him into custody after the Jan. 20 arrest outside of San Francisco.
“Typically the prosecutor’s office in the sending state, in this case California, would notify the receiving state, in this case South Carolina, and the receiving state would tell them whether they intend to extradite,” former Manhattan prosecutor Daniel Bibb told the outlet.
Smith was arrested at a Pasadena bus stop Wednesday following a manhunt and a record-setting $250,000 reward for his capture, after the Jan. 13 murder of the Kupfer made national headlines.
There was no known motive in connection with the fatal stabbing at the Croft House, a high-end furniture store in LA’s Hancock Park neighborhood. Kupfer was working alone in the store and had texted a friend that a customer was “giving her a bad vibe.”
Smith did not steal anything, and had also entered other nearby businesses but quickly left because there were multiple people inside, detectives alleged.
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