Suspect arrested in shooting of legendary Oakland, ‘Last Chance U’ football coach John Beam

OAKLAND — Authorities arrested a suspect early Friday in the Laney College campus shooting of legendary Oakland football coach John Beam, multiple sources told this news outlet.

The arrest, which happened in a city outside of Oakland, caps an intense manhunt for the person suspected of shooting the longtime coach, who gained national fame in 2020 when his Laney College Eagles football team was featured on the Netflix show “Last Chance U.”

Authorities have not released the identity of the man, nor said whether he had any prior connection to the famed coach.

Beam was hospitalized after the shooting, which took place just before noon Thursday inside Laney’s Field House, which houses the college’s administrative offices and other facilities near Fifth Avenue and East Eighth Street. He was severely wounded and hospitalized in critical condition, multiple sources said.

The shooting happened less than 24 hours after another school shooting across Oakland at Skyline High School, where a 15-year-old boy was shot in a bathroom after a confrontation. Two teenagers — a 15-year-old a 16-year-old — were later detained in the shooting, while investigators recovered two semi-automatic firearms from around the scene.

Motives for both shootings, which authorities say are unrelated, remained unclear Friday.

Beam himself coached football at Skyline High School for 22 years — the vast majority of them as the school’s head coach, where he garnered a legendary reputation while winning league championships nearly every year from the late 1980s through early 2000s.

He left the school in 2004 and went to Laney College, where he continued to find success — most notably winning the 2018 California Community College Athletic Association title. He coached at the college until 2024, when he left the sidelines to focus on his job as the college’s athletic director.

Check back for updates to this developing story.

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.