Former Eagles and Raiders player Kevin Johnson found dead at age 55
Former NFL defensive tackle Kevin Johnson has been found dead in Los Angeles. He was 55 years old.
The death of former NFL defensive tackle Kevin Johnson may be connected to three other homeless homicides in the same area of Los Angeles, authorities announced Tuesday.
Johnson, 55, was found dead just before 8 a.m. local time on Wednesday, January 21, at a homeless encampment about 10 miles east of Los Angeles International Airport, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said. At the time, the sheriff’s office said deputies found a man, later identified as Johnson, unconscious from blunt force trauma.
The man was pronounced dead at the scene and the death was ruled a homicide, the sheriff’s office said. On Thursday, January 22nd, the Los Angeles County Coroner announced that Johnson’s cause of death was “blunt force trauma and stab wounds to the head.”
In a Feb. 3 update, the sheriff’s office announced that its homicide unit was investigating a “series of homicides” that occurred in roughly the same location, specifically “the 1300 block of East 120th Street in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles.”
According to the Sheriff’s Office, four people were killed in the area between October 2025 and January 2026. All four victims were homeless and living in homeless camps in the area.
“At this time, investigators are working to determine if these incidents are related,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement. “One of the victims was Kevin Johnson, a former NFL player who played in the 1990s.”
The sheriff’s department is asking for the public’s assistance in the investigation and is asking anyone with information related to the incident to contact the Homicide Bureau or the Los Angeles Regional Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
Who is Kevin Johnson?
A Los Angeles native, Johnson began his football career at Los Angeles Harbor College and Texas Southern University before being selected by the New England Patriots in the fourth round of the 1993 NFL Draft.
After the Patriots released Johnson in August of that year, the defensive tackle briefly spent time in Minnesota and Oakland as a practice squad member and training camp participant, until the Philadelphia Eagles claimed Johnson off waivers in August 1995.
He played two seasons with the Eagles, appearing in 23 regular season games and starting six of them. He also played in two playoff games in 1995.
After Johnson missed practice, the Eagles suspended him and released him in 1996, according to Pro Football Reference and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He signed with the Oakland Raiders in April of the following year, playing in 15 games and recording 7 tackles.
The Raiders released Johnson in 1998, and he went on to play four years in the Arena Football League, winning the Arena Bowl with the Orlando Predators that same year.
Friends and acquaintances told investigators that Johnson had been in poor health in recent years, which contributed to his housing instability, ESPN reported. Those who knew him at the camp described him as quiet and friendly.
violence against homeless people
The deaths of Mr. Johnson and three other homeless victims were the latest incidents of violence against homeless people in the United States. A 2024 report from the National Coalition for the Homeless revealed that the nonprofit organization recorded nearly 2,000 incidents of violence against homeless people over a 23-year period.
“During this period, at least 588 homeless victims lost their lives in violent attacks,” the report said. “These crimes appear to have been motivated by the perpetrators’ prejudice against people experiencing homelessness and facilitated by the perpetrators’ ability to target the homeless with relative ease.”
The report noted that many incidents remain under-reported and are “likely to be even more devastating than available reports suggest.” In 2019, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that less than half (about 44%) of violent incidents against people experiencing homelessness were reported to police, according to the report.
In recent years, multiple incidents have made headlines across the country. In June 2025, a man was arrested after stabbing 11 people at a homeless shelter in Oregon. In October 2024, authorities in Minnesota announced that three people were killed and three others injured in back-to-back shootings at two separate homeless camps.
Similar incidents occurred in 2023 and 2022, including a “serial” murder of three homeless men in Los Angeles, three men stabbed while sleeping in New York City, and a series of mass shootings in New York City and Washington, DC.
Contributors: Eric Larsen and Jack McKessy, USA TODAY. James Ward, Palm Springs Desert Sun
