The homeless man who brutally murdered UCLA student Brianna Kupfer in 2022 by stabbing her 46 times and recording audio of the horrific attack was “hunting for a woman alone” on the day she was killed, prosecutors revealed.

Shawn Laval Smith, who has a lengthy criminal record, was found guilty of murder by a jury in Los Angeles after just one hour of deliberation on Tuesday. The jury agreed with prosecutors that Smith had attacked Kupfer with a knife while “lying in wait” for a lone woman to appear, according to the New York Post.

Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian likened Smith to Hannibal Lecter, the sadistic character from the film series, describing him as someone thrilled by the idea of inflicting violence on women.

Smith, 34, was “hunting for a woman alone” when he encountered 24-year-old Kupfer at her job in a furniture store, as stated by Los Angeles County district attorneys. During the attack, he used a filet knife to stab her and documented the incident with an audio recorder, which he left behind along with the blood-covered and DNA-smeared knife at the crime scene.

BREAKING: @FoxNews can confirm that Shawn Laval Smith, the suspect accused of stabbing to death 24-year-old UCLA grad student Brianna Kupfer, has been ARRESTED in Pasadena. pic.twitter.com/a1PcBg13PB

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) January 19, 2022

Evidence presented during the trial showed that about a month before the attack, Smith had used his recording device to rant about his desire to kill women. “This man hated women,” Balian said in his closing argument, as reported by NBC LA. “It’s easier probably to sleep at night to think something is wrong with him rather than face the truth that this man was on a crusade to hunt, to destroy, and to kill for the mere fact that she was female.”

Defense attorney Robert Haberer attempted to reduce the severity of the murder conviction by arguing that Smith was too mentally unstable to have planned the crime. “It sounds like he was blowing off steam, probably because he was pissed off about something in that moment. Who the hell knows what it was?” he was quoted as saying by ABC 7.

Kupfer, who had been a graduate student studying architecture, lost her life in this tragic attack. Smith could face a sentence of life in prison without parole, but a judge must first determine whether he was sane at the time of the murder.