OAKLAND — John Beam, the legendary football coach who shaped multiple generations of student athletes, anchoring Oakland’s sports community and becoming a respected leader at Laney College, died from a gunshot wound in a shooting at the school’s campus, police said Friday. He was 66.
“We are devastated that John Beam, our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle, coach mentor and friend has passed,” his family said in a statement, asking for privacy. “Our hearts are full from the outpouring of support … We are deeply grateful for your continued prayers well wishes and thoughts.”
Beam was pronounced dead at 10 a.m. Friday, police said. He had been hospitalized since the day before, after a gunman shot the college’s longtime athletics director in the head in the Field House building, where Beam had an office, according to sources with direct knowledge of the incident.
A suspect arrested early Friday morning was identified by police as Cedric Irving Jr., a 27-year-old Oakland resident, who was known to loiter at the downtown campus.
It was a shocking loss for athletes, coaches and Oakland residents who had come to rely on the wisdom and dedication of a man known around town simply as Coach Beam.
His gruff demeanor, bushy mustache, and deadpan honesty made Beam a recognizable character in Oakland’s rich tapestry of sports figures. Those who knew Beam closely remembered most his personal efforts to steer generations of young athletes toward a brighter future.
Victor Chan who went to Skyline High, pays his respects to his former physical education teacher, John Beam, at a makeshift memorial at Laney College in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025. “It hurts,” Chan said as he remembered the beloved coach who was shot the day before and died today. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Nerissa Alfred, a Skyline High graduate of the class of 1999, pays respects to her former athletic director, John Beam, at a makeshift memorial at Laney College in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025. “He made me the person who I am today. He believed in greatness, not in losing; we are all winners,” she said as she remembered the beloved coach who was shot the day before and died today. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Connie Stinson, of Oakland, who went to Skyline High School when John Beam was coaching football there, puts candles at a makeshift memorial for Beam at Laney College on Nov. 14, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. Beam died on Friday after being shot at the college the day before. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
A message is displayed at a makeshift memorial for Laney College Athletic Director John Beam at the college on Nov. 14, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. Beam died on Friday after being shot at the college the day before. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
A makeshift memorial for Laney College Athletic Director John Beam forms at the college on Nov. 14, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. Beam died on Friday after being shot at the college the day before. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
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Victor Chan who went to Skyline High, pays his respects to his former physical education teacher, John Beam, at a makeshift memorial at Laney College in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025. “It hurts,” Chan said as he remembered the beloved coach who was shot the day before and died today. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
During a 40-plus-year career in Oakland, Beam coached Skyline High School’s football team to numerous Oakland Athletic League championships before leaving in 2004 to become the running backs coach at Laney. Beam led the program as head coach from 2012 until last year, when he stepped down to focus on his role as athletics director. “It’s been a good run, brother,” he said in an interview upon retiring.
“Football is about family,” he said in an early scene in the Netflix series “Last Chance U,” which documented the Laney Eagles’ 2019 season, a year after they won the state championship.
Laney College football coach John Beam reacts after throwing the ceremonial first pitch before the Oakland Athletics take on the San Francisco Giants in an MLB game at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, Aug. 23, 2019. Beam and his Laney College football team will be featured on the next season of Netflix’s hit documentary series “Last Chance U.” (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Erika Rosario, the daughter of Stan Peters, who preceded Beam as Laney’s football coach, described Beam as bringing “those successful ‘old school’ ways into a new age.” Indeed, fans of “Last Chance U” quickly took to Beam, noting in online discussions that his swagger and teaching style offered a much softer touch than the stereotype of coaches who bark at players.
The coach embraced the support, sending brief, personalized videos to fans for $30 apiece on his Cameo page. “I can tell how much you care,” noted one of the many five-star reviews.
John Edward Beam was born in January 1959 in San Diego, to a Navy veteran father and Korean mother. He graduated from Kearny High School — which, a couple years ago, inducted Beam into its athletics hall of fame — and stuck around to begin his coaching career at what was then called Serra High.
Football brought him up to Oakland, where he was hired at Skyline High in 1982. The program became storied during his tenure, inspiring awe and respect from rival coaches, who noted how Beam’s kindness seemed to shine from beneath his blunt temperament.
Coach John Beam when he was Skyline High head football coach in 1998 talking to WR Domynic Shaw before a game with Foothill High during the football season. (Nick Lammers/Staff Archives)
At Laney, Beam transcended coaching to become a community leader, urging Oakland residents to look to the junior college as a central engine of city life. His program maintained a 90 percent graduation and transfer rate for his student athletes, which college officials described as “extraordinary.”
In an early scene from the fifth season of “Last Chance U,” Beam gets slightly choked up as he describes running into the stands after winning the 2018 state championship to hug his wife, Cindi, and daughters Monica and Sonjha.
He and Cindi raised the family in the Oakland hills above Skyline Boulevard, not far from the high school. But Beam got all around town, at one point teaching P.E. at Frick Junior High in East Oakland, where alum Terry Butler recalled the coach spending long hours mentoring him and other kids.
Beam’s signature outro during locker-room speeches and motivational talks became legend, in Oakland and on Netflix alike. The sign-off received a nod Friday from Piedmont Police Chief Frederick Shavies, who had known Beam personally and first met him when he was in junior high.
Piedmont Chief of Police Frederick Shavies speaks about John Beam during a Oakland Police press conference about the shooting death of the longtime coach and Laney College Athletic Director as Oakland Police Chief Floyd Mitchell, left, listens at police headquarters in Oakland, Calif. on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025. (Dai Sugano/ Bay Area New Group)
“I knew that if Coach was here, he would end by saying ‘Two claps, ready, ready,’” Shavies, a former Oakland police commander, said at a news conference.
It often seemed Beam shared some kind of connection with everyone in Oakland, including Mayor Barbara Lee, whose nephew was coached by Beam at Skyline High. “He gave Oakland’s youth their best chance,” Lee said. “And he never stopped fighting for them.”
The warmth around Beam only brought the visceral, senseless nature of his killing into harsher focus.
Former Skyline High Football coach John Beam at his new job at Laney College in Oakland on June 16, 2004, as he walks thru the weight room to visit with some of the football players he will be coaching next year. (Dan Rosenstrauch/ Staff Archives)
More painful still for those who loved Beam was that his life was taken at Laney, where he’s held court for decades and was known to have an open-door policy. C.J. Anderson, a retired NFL pro-bowler who now coaches high school football in Benicia, declined to be interviewed Friday, saying he would instead “pour into my kids, like (Beam) did me.”
Keith Bhonapha, a running backs coach at Michigan State, recalled how Beam personally worked to get him back on track when he was cutting class. Eventually, the coach helped Bhonapha secure a university scholarship and, later, his own first coaching gig.
“This is how his life ends? It’s a joke,” Bhonapha said Friday, struggling to hold back tears. “He spent his whole life trying to keep kids out of trouble.”
“Hopefully his legacy is still bigger than this tragic story,” he added, after gathering himself. “It’s going to live on through all of us — all the people he helped.”
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at shomik@bayareanewsgroup.com.