Shawn Bryant was 20 years old when he died on Monday, January 30, 2006, in Los Angeles County. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report described him only as "a 20-year-old white male" who "died Monday, Jan. 30, after being stabbed." Unlike most entries in the report, his gives no address, no city and no neighborhood. The public record does not even say where in the county he was hurt or where he died.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Shawn Bryant has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story, and no news outlet appears to have reported on the death.
He surely had family, friends or neighbors who remember who he was, but none of that has entered the public record.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether he was stabbed during a fight or a robbery, attacked by a stranger or by someone he knew, or hurt indoors or on the street. It does not say what time of day he was hurt, whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital, whether anyone saw what happened, or whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
Shawn Bryant is a common name, and searches for it are crowded with other men, many of them in news stories about crime. They include a 22-year-old college student from Hawthorne who was shot to death outside an Inglewood liquor store in 2011, a man arrested on a murder charge in Georgia, defendants in New Jersey, West Virginia, Michigan and Kentucky, and a former minor-league pitcher born in Oklahoma. None of them can be connected to this death.
Because no address was released, even the community where he died is uncertain. The Sheriff's Department polices the unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County and dozens of contract cities, from the Antelope Valley in the north to communities in the south and east of the county, and its Homicide Bureau investigates killings in all of them. The assignment of the case to the sheriff suggests, but does not prove, that he was hurt somewhere outside the city of Los Angeles and outside the cities that have their own police departments. He was a young man, barely out of his teens, and he may have been killed close to where he lived, worked or went to school.
Hundreds of people are killed in Los Angeles County every year, and a large share of those killings end without an arrest.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Shawn Bryant could be found in news archives or public records. More than 19 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 20-year-old man named Shawn Bryant who died in late January 2006, or who remembers a stabbing in their community at that time, may hold information that could help. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a vehicle seen nearby or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).
