Suspect Captured in Killing of Sherman Oaks Man

"It took two years, eight months and one day.” That, Kathy Caufield said, is how long it took authorities to arrest Kenyon Aikens, accused in the killing of her 31-year-old son Brian Caufield in his Sherman Oaks apartment in March 2009. During that time, a Los Angeles jury has already acquitted a second man, Marquise Edwards, in the crime. A third man,

On Tuesday, a police task force in Arizona arrested Aikens after staking out a home in Scottsdale on a tip, LAPD Detective Chuck Knowls told Sherman Oaks Patch.

Caufield’s slaying was particularly heart-wrenching for his mother, Kathy, because she was on the phone with him from her Texas home when she heard the three gunshots that ended her son’s screams for help. 

The younger Caufield knew the men who entered his Regency Gardens apartment on Woodman Avenue, his mother said.

Police speculate the men were planning to rob Caufield and his roommate of marijuana and cash. Two of the men pretended to be undercover officers, police said. They handcuffed Caufield’s roommate Eric Gonzalez, they said. One of the men brought Caufield to another room where they struggled, police said. Kathy Caufield later learned that her son had been shot once in the face and once in the back. He died at the scene.

Since that night, Kathy Caufield has been on a mission to help bring her son’s killers to justice.

When she learned that police had finally captured Aikens, Caufield said that she did not know whether to laugh or cry “from the relief of knowing that I don’t have to worry about him being out there. I can’t bring my son back, but I can try to bring him justice.”

“Imagine,” she told Patch during a previous interview. “You hear their first cry when they’re born, then you hear their last cry.”

Now with Aikens' arrest, she said, “My mind can quit racing all the time.” 

The Los Angeles County district attorney will now move to extradite Aikens to Los Angeles, Knowls said. It’s not known if Aikens will fight extradition.