The man accused of fatally shooting beloved Northern California football coach John Beam was charged with murder Monday after he allegedly confessed to the killing, court documents obtained Monday show.
Cedric Irving Jr., 27, allegedly told authorities that he used a firearm found in his bag to shoot Beam, who was gunned down Thursday at Laney College in Oakland, according to a probable cause declaration filed in Alameda County Superior Court. Beam died of his injuries Friday.
Irving was taken into custody early Friday at an Oakland-area transit station after he was allegedly seen in surveillance video from the scene, according to the declaration.
Irving appears to have no criminal history, nor had he been a student-athlete at Laney, Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson told reporters. She said the gun used to shoot Beam appears to have been registered to Irving.
Irving is scheduled to be arraigned on murder and gun charges Tuesday, she said. He faces a sentence of 50 years to life in prison if convicted.
It wasn’t immediately clear if he had a lawyer to speak on his behalf.
“He really was the best of Oakland,” Jones Dickson said of Beam, who was featured in Netflix’s “Last Chance U” and coached for years at an Oakland high school before he moved to Laney junior college. “He always had the time. He always had the energy. He always had the heart for the work.”
The prosecutor did not identify a possible motive in the killing.
A police official previously said Irving allegedly went to the college campus “for a specific reason” and noted that the two knew each other but did not have a close relationship.
Irving played football at the high school where Beam previously coached, but that was roughly a decade after his tenure ended at Skyline High School, his brother told NBC Bay Area.
Jones Dickson suggested that Beam’s work around the East Bay city of nearly half a million may have led him to cross paths with Irving.
“People who do the work in the community — with anybody they come into contact with — that’s coach Beam’s M.O.,” she said, adding: “The contact that he would have with anyone around the school would not be unusual.”
Beam, who led Laney to the 2018 California Community College Athletic Association title, coached several NFL players, including 1,000-yard rusher C.J. Anderson of the Denver Broncos.
“You mean the world to me,” Rejzohn Wright of the New Orleans Saints said in an Instagram post after Beam’s death was announced.
Jones Dickson cited Beam’s shooting and a non-fatal shooting the day before at Skyline High School as the reason for a decision to reinstitute mandatory-minimum sentences for felony and misdemeanor gun crimes.
She said that students from Skyline were on a field trip to Laney the day Beam was shot.
“They had lockdowns two days in a row,” she said. “That’s unacceptable.”