The stabbing death of former NFL player Kevin Johnson may be connected to three other killings involving homeless people in the same area of Los Angeles County, officials said Tuesday.
Johnson, 55, was found Jan. 21 at a homeless encampment along a flood control channel in the Willowbrook area of South Los Angeles, suffering from what the sheriff's department described as "head trauma."
County paramedics pronounced Johnson dead at the scene, the sheriff's department said.
The department said Tuesday night that three other homeless people have been killed in the area along East 120th Street on the southwestern edge of the Willowbrook community, all at homeless encampments along the same channel.
The homicides took place from October to January, the sheriff's department said in a statement, and all remain unsolved.
"All four victims were unhoused individuals who were living in encampments," it said. "Homicide investigators continue to pursue all investigative leads and remain committed to identifying the individual or individuals responsible for these crimes."
Sheriff's detectives are working with homeless outreach workers as part of the probe, the department said. It also wants anyone with information about the killings to come forward.
The county medical examiner determined Johnson's cause of death to be "blunt head trauma and stab wounds," according to public case information. Investigators believe he was homeless and living in the encampment, sheriff's officials said last month.
The sheriff's department reported another homicide at nearly the same location, a riverbed along 120th Street, on Jan. 26, according to a statement. Deputies responded based on a report of a person who had died there shortly after midnight, it said.
In that case, paramedics also declared the victim dead at the scene, the sheriff's department said, noting that an investigation continues.
Dates, times and the exact locations for the two other homicides were not immediately clear.
Johnson was a defensive lineman who played in the 1990s mostly for the Philadelphia Eagles and the then-Oakland Raiders.
Attempts to reach his family members were unsuccessful Tuesday night.
Johnson's son told NBC Los Angeles on Wednesday that his father had periodically lived on the streets, though he could have stayed with family and friends. Johnson was the type of person who "would make it seem like everything was OK," Branden Johnson said.
“He was a loving man. He was a family man. He was a father, a friend, and all of the above,” the younger Johnson told the station. “He loved everyone around him and would give his shirt off his back just to make sure everybody else around him was OK.”
Friends previously told KABC-TV that Kevin Johnson may have been suffering from the brain disease caused by repeated head injuries, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
Willowbrook is known for the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital. The area is just south of the city of Los Angeles and its Watts neighborhood. On a county map of flood control channels, the waterway that crosses 120th Street near Elva Avenue is identified as Compton Creek.
Branden Johnson said he was devastated to know his father's death and that of others may be linked.
“It’s devastating just to know that there’s somebody out here doing this to these people,” he told NBC Los Angeles.
