A barrel washed up on the shores of Malibu Lagoon State Beach in California on July 31 containing a naked man’s body, only to be determined by examiners, that he died by a gunshot wound to the head.
The County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s office identified the man as 32-year-old Javonnta Marshann Murphy and listed his cause of death as a gunshot wound to the head.
Investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office have not given out much information, other than the fact that Murphy’s death is listed as a homicide.
Patrick Murphy, a family friend, said, “Javonnta grew up with four brothers and his mother in South Los Angeles. He had been pursuing a career in rap. He was a good kid, good person. He didn’t gang-bang. What happened to him, I just don’t understand how this could happen.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced on August 1 that a lifeguard on Malibu beach had noticed a 55-gallon plastic barrel floating in the lagoon and retrieved it. When he opened the barrel, he found a naked, dead male inside and alerted police.
Police pronounced the victim dead at the scene and launched an investigation into the circumstances of his death and how the barrel got into the lagoon.
“At about 8 p.m., there’s a high tide here and there’s a possibility that the container could have come in from the ocean and then got stuck in the lagoon, but we don’t know,” Lt. Hugo Reynaga of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s homicide bureau said.
“It also looks like his death could have happened fairly recently. From what I saw, the body didn’t look very decomposed or had signs of being deceased for a lengthy period of time,” concluded Reynaga.
