Man Suspected of Killing Oakland Laney College Coach John Beam Is Charged With Murder

Cedric Irving Jr., the man accused of fatally shooting longtime Laney College football coach John Beam last week in Oakland, was charged with murder on Monday by Alameda County prosecutors.

Combined with a gun enhancement, Irving, 27, could face 50 years to life in prison if convicted. He has no criminal record, prosecutors said.

Beam was shot in the head in the campus’ Laney Field House on Thursday afternoon and rushed to the hospital as police locked down the campus to investigate. He died Friday morning.

After officers reviewed surveillance footage and identified a potential suspect, Irving was arrested at the San Leandro BART station on Friday morning with a handgun in one of his bags, according to a declaration of probable cause filed by Oakland police. In an interview, Irving admitted to shooting Beam with the gun, police said.

Police have not disclosed a potential motive for the shooting, but they said Beam and Irving knew each other, although they did not have a close relationship.

Irving is being held without bail and scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday morning at the Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse in Oakland.

Beam, 66, spent decades coaching football in Oakland, where he led successful programs at both Skyline High School and Laney College. He and the Laney Eagles were featured in the fifth and final season of Netflix’s Last Chance U, a docuseries that followed three junior college football programs across the country. In 2018, he guided the Eagles to a state championship and a No. 1 ranking in the country.

Last year, Beam stepped down as Laney’s football coach but remained on staff as athletic director.

“Coach Beam’s legacy isn’t measured in championships or statistics,” Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said in a statement on Friday. “It’s measured in the thousands of young people he believed in, mentored, and refused to abandon, including my nephew, while at Skyline High School. He gave Oakland’s youth their best chance, and he never stopped fighting for them.”

At a Monday afternoon press conference, District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson also announced that her office would reinstitute a policy of seeking mandatory minimum sentences for gun possession convictions.

She said that policy was last in place under Nancy O’Malley, who led the office before Pamela Price, who was recalled last year. Price had run on a progressive platform that included reducing the use of sentencing enhancements.

“My goal is to try to make people aware that there is absolutely some accountability for carrying a gun in Oakland,” Jones Dickson said.

The Laney College shooting was the second at an Oakland school in two days. On Wednesday afternoon, a student was shot and injured at Skyline High, and two minors were arrested.

“When we are having two shootings in one week, back to back, two days in a row, on campuses in Oakland, we need to start having a conversation about what safety looks like in schools,” Jones Dickson said.

Some Skyline students were on a field trip to Laney College the day that Beam was shot. That meant they were locked down for shootings on back-to-back days, Jones Dickson said.

“That’s unacceptable that we have children in our community [for whom] now this is the norm, two days in a row, that they’re locked down for gun violence on a campus. I’m not good with that,” she said. “So, whatever it looks like, we need to start having those conversations; we should be doing that now.”

KQED’s Sara Hossaini contributed to this report.