Man Held in Sherman Oaks ATM Slaying

A man who has spent 14 of the last 17 years in prison has been arrested in the slaying of Sherri Foreman, a pregnant woman who was fatally stabbed last week during a carjacking in the parking lot of a Sherman Oaks bank, Los Angeles police said.

The suspect, Robert Glen Jones, 42, fled from police officers late Tuesday night as they were about to serve a search warrant at his apartment, just a few blocks from the Great Western Bank where Foreman was stabbed as she got into her car after withdrawing money from an automated teller machine, Deputy Police Chief Mark A. Kroeker said.

Officers arrested Jones without incident shortly before midnight after he was spotted walking toward his apartment in the 5000 block of Woodman Avenue, Kroeker said.

Foreman’s boyfriend, Bobby Brock, known as Bobby Rock in the music industry, thanked police Wednesday and asked the public to forgive Jones.

“We have to trust that justice will be done. . . . We can’t answer hate with hate,” Brock said. “We can’t respond with a lynch-mob mentality because that would go against the grain of what Sherri was about.”

News of the arrest came as a relief to Foreman’s father, Alex Foreman.

“I’m very glad they got him and my whole family thanks the Police Department for doing the greatest job I’ve ever seen so quickly,” Foreman said in a telephone interview from his Westminster home. “She’ll always be in my heart. I’m going to miss her very much.”

After serving time for five armed robberies and one rape, Jones was released from prison last fall and moved into an apartment with his girlfriend and five children, Detective Stephen Fisk said. Jones had been at the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island and at the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., police said.

Detectives got a break in the case when a flyer with a composite drawing of the murder suspect was seen by one of two witnesses who had been filmed on a bank videotape casually talking to the suspect before the stabbing, Fisk said.

The witnesses, whom police declined to identify, were customers at the Bank of America across the street from the Great Western Bank at 13701 Riverside Drive and were spotted by police on a Bank of America videotape. The witnesses, neither of whom have been implicated in the slaying, knew Jones and led detectives to his apartment, Kroeker said.

Detectives obtained a search warrant Tuesday night and immediately went to Jones’ apartment. Jones saw the officers about 9:30 and fled down an alley and over a wall into a residential area, Fisk said. Police staked out the area and began searching by land and air for the suspect.

Inside the apartment, detectives recovered a serrated 6-inch paring knife believed to be the weapon used in the stabbing, Kroeker said.

Detective Daniel DeJarnette said that detectives would ask prosecutors to seek the maximum penalty against Jones and that he might also be charged with other crimes committed during the attack, including robbery and attempted carjacking.

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles district attorney’s office, said that prosecutors would wait for evidence from detectives before filing charges. Gibbons added that her office had no information on Jones’ earlier arrests and convictions.

Officials at the Terminal Island penitentiary said Jones was sentenced to prison for bank robbery on Sept. 9, 1975, and paroled in 1983. But he violated the terms of the parole and a warrant was issued for his arrest in July of that year, said Brandy Carr, a staff member of the Terminal Island prison. He was arrested again and imprisoned in October, 1983.

Although Jones finished his sentence in 1991, he violated terms of the release and was returned to the penitentiary, Carr said. He was released most recently on Oct. 15, 1992, Carr said. Officials declined to say how Jones violated his parole or release.

News of Jones’ arrest shook neighbors, who described him and his girlfriend as a quiet couple who kept to themselves.

“I was shocked,” Brenda Brown said. “It was hard to believe something like this could happen this close to home.”

Rosa Manzo, manager of the apartment complex, said that Jones’ girlfriend had moved into the building about a year ago. Another neighbor who asked not to be identified said that Jones moved in with his girlfriend about five months ago.

Manzo described the couple as “quiet people” who never caused problems. She said that Jones’ girlfriend, whom she declined to identify, approached her Tuesday night. “She was crying to me, ‘What’s going on? What’s happening? They’re accusing him,’ ” Manzo said.

Foreman lost her 13-week-old fetus immediately after the March 30 attack. The 29-year-old Toluca Lake woman died the next evening at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. An autopsy determined that she had been stabbed once in the abdomen and that her child died as a result of the injury, Los Angeles County coroner’s officials said.

Foreman was the third person to die in a San Fernando Valley carjacking in less than a month. Before her death, the self-employed beautician described her assailant and told police that he said he wanted her car.

In other recent violent carjackings in Los Angeles County, a 27-year-old Monterey Park woman was fatally shot during an apparent carjacking attempt in the parking lot of an Alhambra fabric store Monday afternoon. Kathy May Lee had driven into the parking lot when a gunman approached her gray Lexus sedan, yanked open the door on the driver’s side and fired a single shot into Lee’s chest as her mother watched in horror from the passenger seat, police said.

Todd Rich, a 26-year-old Long Beach resident, was paralyzed Tuesday when he tried to stay with his pickup truck after an armed carjacker drove it away and crashed it, police said.

The attack on Foreman prompted a $42,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer, Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said.

The City Council and executives of Great Western Bank offered rewards of $12,500, and South Bay Hospital in Redondo Beach, where Foreman’s father works, and the medical staff at Northridge Hospital Medical Center each offered $5,000 rewards, Yaroslavsky said. Another $7,000 came from private donors, one of whom offered $5,000.

“The killing of Sherri Foreman was a tragic event which has made much more of an impact on the community than any homicide I can remember in the last decade,” Yaroslavsky said. “The combination of her being young, pregnant and senselessly murdered . . . is the kind of crime that unsettles people more than anything else.”

The reward and publicity surrounding the killing helped generate more than 300 tips for Detectives DeJarnette and James Rahm, who worked the case for seven consecutive days, rarely taking a break, Kroeker said. Joined by volunteers, detectives combed nearby commercial and residential areas during the weekend and distributed composite sketches of the suspect.

Kroeker said that the public needs to be aware that an average of almost 20 robberies are committed each day in the Valley. “It’s important to restate that everybody should be aware of their surroundings,” he said.

Times staff writer Alicia Di Rado contributed to this story.