John Beam, ‘Last Chance U’ coach and Oakland football great, dies after Laney College shooting

John Beam, the revered Laney College football coach and athletic director whose leadership and mentorship transformed generations of Oakland athletes and inspired the Netflix series “Last Chance U,” died Friday morning after being shot on campus a day earlier.

Beam, 66, was shot Thursday inside the Laney College fieldhouse in what police described as a targeted attack. He died of his injuries at Highland Hospital, where family, friends and former players gathered through the night. He was pronounced dead around 10 a.m. Friday, officials said.

Oakland police arrested Cedric Irving Jr., 27, early Friday at the San Leandro BART Station after an intense manhunt.

Acting Police Chief James Beere said Irving, an Oakland resident, told investigators he knew Beam, though the two “did not have a relationship.”

Irving “was on campus for a specific reason. This wasn’t related to a robbery – this was a very targeted incident,” Beere said, but stopped short of saying Irving went to campus to harm Beam.

Beere said investigators do not believe Irving was a Laney College student.

“He played football at Skyline High School but not for coach Beam,” Beere said. “To the best of our knowledge, he was never a Laney student and did not work there.”

Authorities said they were were still determining a motive and had not submitted the case to prosecutors as of Friday afternoon.

Beere said police tracked the suspect by reviewing “hundreds of hours of surveillance footage,” including images from Ring cameras, business security systems and Laney College’s own cameras. Footage from a bus helped officers identify Irving before he was taken into custody without incident, Beere said.

“We looked at every camera we could legally look at,” Beere said. “We used cameras from Laney College to residences in the area, even bus video footage. With that, a deputy was able to recognize the suspect and pull him into custody.”

Police said they recovered a firearm from Irving that matched the caliber of shell casings found at the scene. “Our lab immediately responded,” Beere said. “The weapon has been recovered.”

Beere condemned the shooting, which came one day after a 15-year-old student was wounded in a separate incident at Skyline High School and two people police say had ghost guns were arrested. He said the Skyline victim is “recovering and in good spirits.”

“Coach Beam was open to helping everybody in our community,” Beere said. “You have a coach that’s on campus there to help the public – and someone was able to come to campus with a gun. It’s completely unacceptable for our children and community members to be exposed to violence like this.”

During a news conference, officials read a statement from Beam’s family that said they were “devastated that John Beam – our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother, and uncle – has been taken from us far too soon. John dedicated his life to uplifting others through education, mentorship, and the game he loved. His loss leaves a hole in our family and in the Oakland community he served so passionately.”

In a statement, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee praised law enforcement “for their swift work in making an arrest in the shooting of Coach Beam. This arrest is a testament to the effective collaboration and dedication of our law enforcement community.”

Before Irving’s arrest, investigators circulated an alert to other police agencies that included two blurry surveillance images apparently captured at Laney College. In one, a man in a dark jacket walks through what appear to be glass doors, carrying bags or backpacks in both hands. In the other, taken from above, the same man has the hood of his jacket pulled up.

Irving’s father, Cedric Irving Sr., stared in disbelief at the reporter who knocked on his door Friday morning and told him his son had been arrested. The elder Irving lives in a second-story apartment on a cul-de-sac street in San Leandro, just below Interstate 580. Standing on the porch of his apartment building, Irving Sr. said he was not yet ready to talk publicly about his son, whom he said he loved fiercely but from whom he had been estranged for several years.

According to his father, Irving had played football during his junior and senior year at Skyline High. He had also at one point attended Chabot College, the father said, but left because Chabot had no football program.

Reached by phone Friday, Irving’s brother, Samuael Irving, said he was stunned to learn of the arrest.

“It’s painful,” he said upon learning that his brother was suspected in Beam’s shooting.

Samuael Irving said his brother excelled academically and athletically in high school, where he ran track and played football.

“He was the scholar of everyone,” he said. “I was the one always getting F’s and D’s. He loved playing football – that’s why he went to Laney, to play.”

The brother said Cedric grew distant from the family in recent years after an argument with their father.

“That’s when things got all weird,” he said. “He stopped talking to us. He wouldn’t tell us what was wrong.”

Cedric Irving had worked as a security guard but lost his job after an altercation, his brother said. More recently, he was evicted from his apartment.

“I hope it isn’t him,” Samuael Irving said quietly. “The Cedric I knew wasn’t capable of murder – but the way things had been going, I honestly don’t know.”

Beam, 66, who gained national recognition when the Netflix series “Last Chance U” spotlighted Laney College, was shot in the head Thursday inside the campus field house, officials said.

He was taken to Highland Hospital, where friends, former players and longtime colleagues gathered Thursday evening awaiting updates.

The shooting prompted a campus-wide lockdown and a police search for a suspect described as a man in a black hoodie. Acting Police Chief Beere said Thursday there was no ongoing threat to the college.

Beam’s former players described him as a father figure who mentored generations of Oakland athletes.

“He turned boys to men,” former player Clinton Pugh had said. “If anybody can pull through, it’s him.”

Mayor Lee called Beam “a giant in Oakland – a mentor, an educator, and a lifeline for thousands of young people.”

“For over 40 years, he has shaped leaders on and off the field, and our community is shaken alongside his family,” she said. “This is the second shooting on an Oakland campus in two days, and it is devastating.”

Beam has been a fixture in Bay Area athletics for more than four decades, leading Laney to a 2018 national community college championship and helping hundreds of players transfer to four-year universities and even the NFL.

Correction: This story was updated after misstating Irving’s age. He is 27.

This article originally published at John Beam, ‘Last Chance U’ coach and Oakland football great, dies after Laney College shooting.