Oakland – Thursday marked one week since the shooting death of Laney College Athletic Director John Beam at the campus’ Fieldhouse.
The Peralta Community College District first alerted the community of an active shooter and notification of a campus lockdown at 12:16 p.m. using Peralta’s security alert system, Rave Mobile.
After 45 minutes, another alert read that the lockdown was lifted.
At a press conference the following morning, the Oakland Police Department announced that Beam had died from fatal gunshot wounds.
In the days following the shooting and subsequent lockdown, members of the Laney community spoke to The Citizen about their experiences during, and in the aftermath of, those 45 minutes.
Edan Gath, Laney student
“It seemed very surreal for a little while.”
Edan Gath is a Laney student and a coach at a local soccer club. He biked to campus as usual and grabbed a coffee before heading to class.
Finishing class at about 11:50 a.m., he headed into the Student Center, passing the Quad where things looked to be business as usual. “I bought lunch and everything,” he said. “It seemed fine.”
During a conversation with a classmate over lunch, they “noticed a commotion happening by the front door” and saw faculty “running back and forth trying to talk to one another.”
Gath said he and his classmate learned about the active shooter alert from a cafeteria employee. They hid in a stairwell with a woman and her infant for the duration of the lockdown.
He noted the many confused students peeking into the Student Center windows, while teachers communicated through the door that they should immediately leave campus.
“After going home that day, I felt a little bit traumatized because I was very scared. I felt kind of trapped in the cafeteria,” Gath said. “I understand they have the protocols for a reason [but] sitting in the openness in the cafeteria, I felt kind of unsafe to think that if there was an active shooter, it would be easy for them to just come in the cafeteria and see all of us.”
On Tuesday, Gath’s first day back on campus since the shooting, his teacher took the first 15 minutes of class “just to talk about the coach and resources that us students can have.”
“I can’t help but feel very sorry for [Beam] and his family,” Gath said. “I’ve never met him, but feel for him very strongly.”
Amelie Brown, Laney librarian
“I really think that all of us need more training on an emergency situation to better understand what each person’s role is and what the role of Diligence is.”
Amelie Brown, a college librarian and part-time faculty member, said she was one of “about six” employees on shift in the library at the time of the lockdown. She had just begun her noon shift at the library when she said Tarek ElJarrari, a dean with the Office of Instruction, came “running” into the library.
Brown said ElJarrari directed her and her colleagues to “close the door,” and “don’t let anybody in or anybody out.”
She said she “didn’t see any” Diligence Security Group personnel in the area following the alert from the district. “I had no idea what was going on,” Brown said.
She said library employees closed the blinds “so people couldn’t look in” and lingered near the front doors, guarding the only entrance to the building.
“Of course, people wanted to leave, right? Some people were really adamant […] so there was tension,” Brown said.
Brown said that a few students, who were accompanied by a library manager, were allowed to enter the library while the lockdown was active.
However, Brown said a lone person who knocked on the door during the lockdown gave her pause.
She said she called the district’s security dispatch to ask what she should do. “I said, ‘I’m at the library, there’s a person at the door, but we are in lockdown. So what do you suggest? And they were like, ‘What library are you calling from? What campus are you on? Which door are you talking with?’ They had no idea.”
On the other side of the line, dispatchers said they were viewing the camera feed and didn’t see anyone outside the library. But Brown said “the person was still standing there.”
“I thought, ‘There is a camera there, but I don’t know when the last time that thing worked,’” she said.
In an email to The Citizen, Deputy Chancellor and Chief Operations Officer Greg Nelson wrote that “the cameras around the library are functional” and “are recording around the clock.”
After the lockdown had been lifted, Brown said that ”the staff here went through all the floors and told students and made sure they all [left], and then we closed.”
Driving past the scene on her way home, Brown says she felt “shock, more than anything.”
Dylan Green, Laney student
“You feel like you’re safe and everything. And then reality hits when you see something like this.”
Upstairs, tucked away on the third floor of the library, Dylan Green sat doing homework with headphones over his ears, unaware of what was transpiring below. Even though he was working at his computer, he hadn’t yet noticed any email or phone alerts from the district’s alert system.
“It was all peaceful here,” he said. “Nobody even realized a single thing. Everybody was chill. It was all quiet.”
He said that around noon, library workers told him the library was closed.
“They didn’t mention that it was an emergency,” he said. “They just told us, […] ‘Everybody needs to get out now and get back home.’ That’s when I looked at my emails and saw that there was an email saying that there was a lockdown, and then the lockdown was lifted.”
Green said he did not receive a phone call or text from the alert system.
In general, Green said he feels safe on the campus, citing the Peralta Colleges’ response to federal immigration agents in the Bay Area as an example of “protocols” he found reassuring.
“[Laney has] warned us about most things that’s happening,” he said. “They know what they’re doing, but they can’t control everything. Like if a shooter’s on site, you can’t really stop them.”
Angel Hernandez and Miguel Flores, Laney students
“It was tragic. I know he was a coach to one of my uncles in high school.”
Miguel Flores and Angel Hernandez have been best friends since the ninth grade. When Flores received a call and email notification that there was an active shooter situation at Laney, it prompted him to immediately call Hernandez, who he knew to be on campus that day.
“At first it was supposed to be a joke call, like ‘oh, keep your head down,’” Flores said. But after Hernandez told him that shots were heard in the area, “the tension just shifted.”
They used to take dual enrollment courses at Laney while in high school, which familiarized them with Peralta’s alert system.
Flores believed that there was someone with a weapon on campus, not an active shooter. Hernandez said that he was locked inside of the library, with very little information about what was happening.
When he went home at the end of the day, Hernandez said he felt “uneasy.”
Normally, Hernandez and Flores said they “just walk around the entire campus without a worry,” roaming and exploring the grounds between classes.
But on Monday, the friends stopped short of the bridge over the Laney reservoir leading to the Fieldhouse. They said the events of Nov. 13 were still on their minds.
“That’s kind of why we didn’t go to that area [today],” Hernandez said.
Rachel • Nov 21, 2025 at 8:34 pm
Condolences to the family, loved ones, and all impacted by the loss of Coach Beam. This was a brilliant read. Great contribution from those who gave their thoughts and awesome writing by Tamara Copes 💜