‘Rage, Sorrow’ Grip Father, Boyfriend of Slain Woman

She was looking forward to both an acting career and her first child.

All that ended Tuesday night, when Sherri Janine Foreman, 29, was stabbed in the abdomen at a Sherman Oaks bank, apparently in an attempted carjacking. The 13-week-old fetus she was carrying died almost immediately, but she hung on until 11:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Thursday morning, her father quietly expressed his anger at the unknown man who killed his only daughter.

“If it had been a knife, she’d be alive because that would have been a clean cut,” Alex Foreman, 62, said as he sat in his living room in Westminster. “But he stabbed her with whatever he used to try to break into her car, and it tore up everything inside of her.”

He and his daughter’s boyfriend, Bobby Brock, went to the Forest Lawn Mortuary in Cypress on Thursday afternoon to arrange for Sherri Foreman to be buried near her mother, who died in 1984.

“Words can’t describe the combination of sorrow and absolute rage we are feeling,” Brock said. Known in the music industry as Bobby Rock, he is a drummer for singers Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, twin sons of the late Rick Nelson.

Brock said he met Foreman a year ago.

“Very much happened during that one year, however. It was a very intense relationship. We accomplished as much in one year as many people do in a lifetime,” he said.

Alex Foreman said his daughter had been happy with Brock and excited about the baby.

“It seemed like they knew each other a lot longer. That’s how happy they were,” he said.

Foreman said his daughter was born July 22, 1963, in Downey and grew up in Orange. She graduated in 1981 from Villa Park High School.

Villa Park Principal Walter Otto said Sherri Foreman “was a very, very pretty girl. She was a fairly quiet kid with half a dozen or so close friends.”

While living in Los Angeles the past six years, she was assembling a band and trying to break into the entertainment business, and was seeking a theatrical agent. With her musical talent and good looks--piercing green eyes and dark brown hair--”she had managed to get her foot into quite a few doors,” said her stepmother, Sharon Foreman, 56.

But then the phone call came at 10 p.m. Tuesday from Northridge Hospital Medical Center: Their daughter had been stabbed.

“From the sound of the woman’s voice, it wasn’t even serious,” Alex Foreman said. “But then I went to see her, and it was bad.”

His daughter’s olive coloring, from her Greek and Italian ancestry, was unusually pale, he said. She opened her eyes only once and he was not sure if she even recognized him. “The doctors said she was strong and she might make it, but she kept losing too much blood,” Alex Foreman said.

The Foremans stayed by her side until about 5 a.m. Wednesday. They came back several hours later to continue the vigil, they said. The couple and Brock took turns holding her hand and talking with detectives about the investigation. Sherri Foreman underwent her second operation and doctors called the family in.

“It didn’t sink in,” Alex Foreman said. “They said her heart gave way. And then it sunk in.”

Funeral arrangements are pending, family members said.

“How do you express the magnitude of this tragedy?” Brock said. “It involved not only a young, innocent girl, but also the life of a child. It’s beyond comprehension.”

Brock said the public should know about the crime, both to awaken them to the deterioration of society and to help apprehend the killer.

“I want to make people aware of the incident,” Brock said. “There will be a reward for the arrest and conviction of whoever did this.”