Episode 115: Shawn O'Brien

In July of 2006, Shawn O'Brien was a 34 years old carpenter who didn’t show up for work on Saturday, July 22. Around 6 o'clock that night, his sister called 911. She had found him lying in a pool of blood on the floor of his Pleasant Street basement apartment. First responders weren’t sure what happened to Shawn. They believed he had possibly had a seizure. Did he fall and hit his head? The police didn’t consider the basement a crime scene so they didn’t close it off immediately and investigate it.


Police would come back at a later time to investigate the basement. The autopsy would be inconclusive but ruled that O’Brien had blunt force trauma to his head. And it didn’t seem likely it came from a fall.


“This is a classic sign of somebody being assaulted,” said Dr. Timothy Gallagher, an independent forensic pathologist. Gallagher also said, he cannot with one hundred percent certainty rule out that it was an accident, because there are no witnesses to corroborate what exactly happened in his final moments.


But, Gallagher does not believe O’Brien just fell to the floor. “Most likely not,” he told the NBC 10 I-Team. “When a person does fall, their injuries are just one-sided, they do not hit the ground and turn over and hit the ground again and turn over and hit the ground again. They hit the ground once, creating one injury,” said the forensic pathologist.


The police have two persons of interest. A man named Armand Rouleau rented the apartment to O’Brien. The other person of interest is Armand’s then girlfriend, Lynn Hallal.


Today, Natalia St. Louis is no longer a teenager. She is an adult who is determined to find out what happened to her father 15 years ago. Please be sure to visit Today, there are no answers about Shawn’s death. Natalia St. Louis is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in her father’s case. She has a Facebook page titled “Justice for Shawn O’Brien.” And if you know anything about Shawn's death, you can contact the Cranston Police Department at 401-942-2211 with your tips.