A 27-year-old man was charged on Monday with the murder of the beloved Oakland football coach John Beam, who died last week after being shot in the head on the junior college campus in northern California where he worked.
Cedric Irving Jr, who does not have a criminal record, was charged with murder and use of a gun during the crime, Alameda county district attorney Ursula Jones Dickson said at a news conference.
Irving could face 50 years to life if convicted. He also faces enhancement charges, alleging he personally fired a gun that caused great bodily injury and that the victim was particularly vulnerable, possibly due to age, according to the charging complaint.
The prosecutor did not mention a possible motive in the killing.
Beam became widely recognized after his appearance on the Netflix series Last Chance U five years ago. A day before the killing, Beam stood in a community forum and spoke about security concerns on campus. His comments referenced all four Laney campuses, and included the field house, the location where he was killed.
“Coach Beam was such a legend in Oakland, and so that’s who he was,” Jones Dickson said. “He always had the time, he always had the energy, he always had the heart for the work. He’s part of Oakland’s legacy.”
Irving is being held without bail, and is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday. The Alameda county public defender’s office said it has not been appointed to represent Irving and declined comment.
Back-to-back shootings at two schools last week have roiled Oakland, a city of roughly 400,000 across the bay from San Francisco. On Wednesday, a student was shot at Oakland’s Skyline high school. The student is in stable condition and two juveniles were in custody.
Jones Dickson said Skyline students were on a field trip at Laney College and went through two lockdowns in the same week. She said it was time to bring accountability into the debate over gun violence because too many young people were being hurt by easy access to guns.
“That’s unacceptable that we have children in our community who 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.
Officers arrived at Laney College before noon on Thursday to find Beam shot in the head at the athletics field house. He was treated at a hospital, but died the following day from his injuries.
Irving was arrested at a commuter rail station just after 3am on Friday. He was carrying the firearm used to shoot Beam, and he admitted to carrying out the shooting, according to the probable cause document.
Oakland police assistant chief James Beere said the suspect went on campus for a “specific reason” but did not elaborate. “This was a very targeted incident,” he said at a Friday news conference.
Beere did not say how the two men knew each other but said Irving was known to hang around the Laney campus. Irving’s brother told the San Francisco Chronicle that Irving had lost his job as a security guard after an altercation and was facing eviction at home.
Irving’s brother also spoke to the San Francisco Standard and said Irving was a member of the football and track teams and later attended Laney College.
Oakland’s mayor, Barbara Lee, said in a statement: “Coach’s Beam’s legacy isn’t measured in championships or statistics. 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.”
Lee also said Beam’s shooting was the second on an Oakland campus in two days.
Beam joined Laney College in 2004 as a running backs coach and became head coach in 2012, winning two league titles. According to his biography on the college’s website, at least 20 of his players went on to the NFL.
Beam previously worked at Skyline high school, where Irving had played football but after Beam had left for another job. Beam led the team to 15 Oakland Athletic League titles from the 1980s through the early 2000s.
There have been at least 469 on-campus gunfire incidents in 2025 from elementary schools to university and college campuses, according to the EveryShot tracker maintained by the advocacy group Everytown.
