The son of slain former NFL star Kevin Johnson doesn’t need his father to be remembered for the Los Angeles homeless encampment the place he was crushed and stabbed to dying final month by a doable serial killer.
“He simply wasn’t some homeless man standing [in an] encampment,” his heartbroken son, Branden Johnson, instructed ABC 7.
“He was a father, a good friend, member of the family, an ex-husband who cherished everybody round him, and I don’t need the encampment to be seen as how he went out.”
Johnson, 55, found the infamous camp alongside the LA River about six months in the past, and would spend a couple of nights every week there earlier than he was murdered final month — regardless of understanding how harmful it was, his son mentioned.
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“He wouldn’t put emphasis on it as a result of he didn’t need me to fret,” Branden Johnson instructed ABC 7. “So he would simply sort of brush it off like, you recognize, ‘I’ll be all proper, son.’”
The camp is now tied to a minimum of three different murders — and it’s doable the identical individual is behind all 4 killings, in keeping with police.
Johnson’s physique was discovered on Jan. 21 and the medical expert dominated his dying a murder from blunt head trauma and stab wounds. Branden helped investigators determine his father’s physique on the scene.
“My dad was my greatest good friend. I talked to him virtually each single day, even within the conditions that he was in,” he mentioned. “He was only a loving, light individual.”
Johnson’s dying is one among 4 killings across the Compton Creek encampment over the previous 4 months, in keeping with investigators.
Michelle Steele, 52, was shot within the head on Oct. 5 and died greater than a month later within the hospital.
Octavio Arias, 52, was crushed to dying on Dec. 4.
And simply final week, Mauro Alfaro, a person in his 50s, was bludgeoned to dying.
Investigators are working to find out the motive behind the killings.
It’s not clear why the previous defensive lineman, who performed three seasons within the NFL, was out on the streets — however buddies instructed he was affected by CTE, a degenerative mind illness related to repeated head trauma.
“He wasn’t the kind of individual that might contact a fly. He had no anger in his coronary heart, no evil – that simply was not him,” Shantel Hill, Johnson’s ex-wife, instructed the outlet.
