The death of former NFL defensive tackle Kevin Johnson could be connected to three other murder cases of homeless people in the same area of Los Angeles, authorities said on Tuesday, Feb. 3.
Johnson, 55, was found dead shortly before 8 a.m. local time on Wednesday, Jan. 21, at a homeless encampment about 10 miles east of Los Angeles International Airport, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. At the time, the sheriff’s department said deputies located an unconscious man, later identified as Johnson, suffering from blunt force trauma.
He was pronounced dead at the scene, and his death was ruled a homicide, the sheriff’s department said. On Thursday, Jan. 22, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner said Johnson’s cause of death was ‘blunt head trauma and stab wounds.’
In an update on Feb. 3, the sheriff’s department said its Homicide Bureau was investigating a ‘series of homicide cases’ that occurred in the same general location, specifically the ‘1300 block of East 120th Street in the unincorporated area of Los Angeles.’
Four people were killed in the area from October 2025 to January 2026, according to the sheriff’s department. All four victims were unhoused and living in homeless encampments in the area.
‘At this time, investigators are working to determine whether these cases are related,’ the sheriff’s department said in a statement. ‘One of the victims was Kevin Johnson, a former NFL player who played during the 1990’s.’
The sheriff’s department is asking for the public’s assistance in the investigation and has urged anyone with information related to the incidents to contact the Homicide Bureau or the Los Angeles Regional Crime Stoppers.
Who was Kevin Johnson?
Born in Los Angeles, Johnson began his football career at Los Angeles Harbor College and Texas Southern University before being drafted by the New England Patriots in the fourth round of the 1993 NFL Draft.
After the Patriots released Johnson that August, the defensive tackle made brief stops in Minnesota and Oakland as a practice squad member and training camp participant before the Philadelphia Eagles claimed him off waivers in August 1995.
He played two seasons for the Eagles, appearing in 23 games and starting six of them in the regular season. He also appeared in two playoff games in 1995.
After he missed a practice, the Eagles suspended and then released Johnson in 1996, according to Pro Football Reference and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He signed with the Oakland Raiders the following April and appeared in 15 games, tallying seven tackles.
In 1998, the Raiders released Johnson and he then played four years in the Arena Football League, winning an ArenaBowl with the Orlando Predators that same year.
Violence against people who are homeless
The deaths of Johnson and the three other unhoused victims mark the latest incident of violence against people who are homeless in the United States. A 2024 report from the National Coalition for the Homeless revealed that the non-profit organization documented nearly 2,000 incidents of violence against people who were homeless over a period of 23 years.
‘At least 588 of unhoused victims lost their lives in violent attacks during this period,’ the report states. ‘These crimes appear to have been motivated by a perpetrator’s bias against people experiencing homelessness, and to have been facilitated by a perpetrator’s ability to target homeless people with relative ease.’
The report noted that many incidents remain underreported and are ‘likely even more gruesome than available reports imply.’ In 2019, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that less than half — about 44% — of violent incidents against people experiencing homelessness are reported to police, according to the report.
In recent years, multiple incidents across the country have made national headlines. In June 2025, a man was arrested for stabbing 11 people at an Oregon homeless shelter. In October 2024, authorities in Minnesota said three people were killed, and three others were injured in back-to-back shootings at two separate homeless encampments.
Similar incidents also occurred in 2023 and 2022, including ‘serial’ killings of three homeless men in Los Angeles, three men who were stabbed while they slept in New York City, and a string of shootings in New York City and Washington, DC.