A US football coach who starred in the Netflix documentary Last Chance U, about struggling college teams, has died after being shot on campus, authorities in California said.
John Beam, director of athletics at Oakland’s Laney College, was hurt in a Thursday lunchtime incident at the school’s field house, its downtown sports training complex. He later died, the Oakland police department said on Friday.
A lockdown of the entire Laney campus was lifted by Friday morning, and the Oakland police department announced it had made an arrest.
“This was a very targeted incident,” said the acting Oakland police chief, James Beere, who added that the suspect and Beam knew each other, but were not close.
The suspect went on campus for a “specific reason”, Beere told reporters, but did not elaborate on what that was. Beam was “open to helping everybody in our community”, he said.
Sources told ABC News that Beam was shot in the head, and that the suspect was arrested in possession of a firearm.
Beam, began his career at Laney College in 2004 as a running backs coach and became head coach in 2012, winning two league titles. He had served as the college’s athletics director since 2006, according to the school’s website. Beam retired from coaching in 2024 but stayed on at the school to shape its athletic programs.
Over the course of his career at Skyline high school in Oakland and Laney college, Beam coached at least 20 players who went on to the NFL, including Nahshon Wright of the Chicago Bears, Rejzohn Wright of the New Orleans Saints, former Los Angeles Rams player CJ Anderson and two-time Super Bowl champion offensive lineman Marvel Smith.
Beam told Kron4 during a 2020 interview that he kept in contact with athletes even after they moved beyond high school and college. “Longtime friends and ex-players who have come back and told me, thank you for taking the time to mentor me, and have my back,” Beam said.
He appeared with his team on the fifth and final season of the Netflix hit show Last Chance U in 2020, which highlights the challenges that non-elite colleges face in funding and operating a competitive sports program, and chronicling the ups and downs of Laney’s six-win, five-loss 2019 season.
The success of the series led to a two-season spin-off, Last Chance U: Basketball, in 2021.
In a statement, officials of the Peralta community college district, which oversees Laney, said it was “a frightening moment for our community”, adding that there was no longer an active threat and the campus had reopened.
“The safety of our students, faculty and staff is our highest priority, and we are working closely with police and emergency personnel to ensure the campus remains protected,” it said.
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.
“Gun violence has stolen the life of a man who dedicated himself to building up the young people of this city. We cannot accept this. We cannot let guns continue flooding our streets and destroying the very people trying to save our community.
“Coach Beam spent four decades lifting up Oakland and mentoring our young people. Now we must honor his memory by continuing the hard work of ridding our community of gun violence. We owe it to every family shattered by this gun violence crisis.”
Frederick Shavies, police chief of the nearby city of Piedmont, spoke during an Oakland police department news conference of his connection to Beam.
Shavies first read a statement from the family: “We are devastated that John Beam, our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle, coach, mentor and friend has passed. Our hearts are full from the outpouring of love and support from all those who cared about him.” The family requested that their privacy be respected during this time.
Shavies spoke of the impact Beam had on him as a father figure during his teen years. “Coach has always been there for me, has always reached out,” he said; adding that the community was mourning the loss of “an absolutely incredible human being”.
“Coach was special,” Shavies said, “and it’s tragic that we lost him.”
The shooting is the latest incident in an epidemic of gun violence afflicting school and college campuses across the US.
In an earlier statement, Lee had noted that Beam’s shooting was the second on an Oakland campus in two days.
In the earlier incident, on Wednesday, a student was shot at Oakland’s Skyline high school, the Associated Press reported. The student is in stable condition. Police said they arrested two juveniles and recovered two firearms.
According to the EveryShot tracker maintained by the advocacy group Everytown, there have been at least 460 on-campus gunfire incidents in 2025 from elementary schools to university and college campuses, including 33 in California. Nationwide, 73 of the shootings resulted in fatalities.
