OAKLAND — The man accused of gunning down legendary Oakland football coach and “Last Chance U” star John Beam made his first appearance in court Tuesday, in a slaying that has since led the county’s top prosecutor to significantly tighten prosecution of gun crimes.
Cedric Irving Jr., 27, remained silent during the brief hearing, during which he was arraigned before Alameda County Judge Michael T. Risher on a single murder charge and a slew of sentencing enhancements that could leave him imprisoned for life, if convicted in a trial.
Wearing a green protective vest and standing with his hands behind his back, Irving was ordered held without bail at Santa Rita Jail after his attorney, a public defender, waived his formal arraignment. The judge set a Dec. 16 hearing for Irving to enter a plea.
A host of people who knew Beam — from former NFL star Marshawn Lynch to a middle school student of Beam’s from four decades ago — sat in the gallery to support the late coach’s family. Sitting in the front row, Beam’s wife looked on during Tuesday’s hearing while someone sitting behind her held his hands on her shoulders.
“It’s hard for it to sink in,” said Martin Lawson, whose relationship with Beam goes back to the early 1980s at Frick Junior High School in Oakland, where Lawson attended seventh grade and Beam taught gym.
“How could Beam get shot?” he added, ahead of the hearing. “Who would shoot Coach Beam? I never imagined something like this.”
Laney College assistant football coach Toni Pole and former Laney College track star Bibiana Enriquez, from left, visit a memorial for former Laney College football coach John Beam outside the school’s athletic facility on Monday, Nov. 17, 2025. Beam was fatally shot at the facility on Nov. 13. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
The show of support for Beam was indicative of the outsized impact the coach had on countless students and players across Oakland, said Damon Gardner, who played defensive back and running back for Coach Beam during Skyline High School’s heyday in the early 1990s.
“He was like a father figure for everybody,” said Gardner, whose sons later played for Beam at Laney College. “He was one of those coaches who wanted you to succeed. He was a real role-model coach.”
Beam was shot in the head before noon Thursday at the Laney College Field House, where he worked as the college’s athletic director and had recently retired as the Eagles’ decades-long football coach.
Cedric Irving Jr., 27, of Oakland, after his arrest on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025, in connection with the fatal shooting of Laney College Athletic Director John Beam. (Courtesy of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office)
Authorities arrested Irving around 4 a.m. the following day near the San Leandro BART station, following a massive manhunt that included reviewing hundreds of hours of surveillance footage from across the East Bay. Beam was pronounced dead at 10 a.m. Friday.
As he confessed to the shooting, Irving accused the coach of putting “witchcraft” on him, multiple sources said.
Authorities say they recovered the suspected murder weapon from a backpack Irving had on him when arrested. The firearm was registered to him, a police detective wrote in a court filing.
In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Alameda County Chief Public Defender Brendon Woods called Beam’s death “incredibly sad,” adding that “the community is mourning his loss.” Woods said his office had yet to receive “the bulk” of the evidence collected so far in the case, and claimed that media reports concerning Irving’s statements to police “suggests serious mental health problems may play a significant role in this case.”
The campus killing led Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson to announce this week that she would seek to re-establish mandatory minimum sentencing for misdemeanor cases involving gun possession. The change marks a direct response to Beam’s death and a separate, non-fatal shooting last week at Skyline High in the Oakland hills, where a 15-year-old boy was shot, allegedly by classmates in a campus bathroom.
Specifically, Jones Dickson said that cases that would otherwise be misdemeanors may be upgraded to felonies, with defendants required to spend a certain amount of time in custody. That includes seeking 90-day jail sentence for misdemeanor gun cases, 180-day sentences for felony possession charges and 16 months in prison for people with felony convictions who are caught with guns.
She vowed to seek “further mandatory jail time” for people caught with unregistered guns, commonly known as “ghost guns.”
“There must be more accountability,” Jones Dickson said in a written statement. “Our schools, students and teachers need to thrive in a safe gun-free environment. I believe that this will be an important step in that direction to make Oakland and Alameda County safer.”
Skyline High school freshman Piper Miura, center, along with Olive Grippo, right, and Brianna Hernandez and Sally Gao, from left, carry signs in the Safeway supermarket parking lot on Redwood Road in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2025. Many students walked out to protest gun violence after a student was shot at the school on Nov. 12 and former Skyline High School football coach John Beam was shot and killed at Laney College on Nov. 13 by a former Skyline student. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
The policy shift, which prosecutors were notified of Monday, signals a stark departure from Jones Dickson’s predecessor, Pamela Price. The former district attorney circulated a memo in 2023 instructing her prosecutors to use probation terms as the “presumptive offer” in all cases where the defendant was legally eligible for them, and to seek “low end” sentences when probation wasn’t on the table.
Price, who was recalled in 2024, used that policy as part of broader efforts to reduce incarceration and implement progressive justice reform.
In his statement Tuesday, Woods called Jones Dickson’s move to bring back mandatory minimum sentences for gun possession “reactionary” and said it “would not have prevented this from happening.”
“This policy will not address the proliferation of guns nor our nation’s mental health crisis,” Woods said. “Instead of more jail and prison, we should invest in more effective solutions, such as diversion, mentorship and violence interruption.”
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.