Woman Dies of Stabbing by Carjacker

A former Orange County resident has died of the same wounds that had already killed her fetus after she was stabbed near an automated teller machine by a would-be carjacker.

Sherri Janine Foreman, 29, who grew up in Orange and was a 1981 Villa Park High School graduate, died Wednesday night. Her 13-week-old fetus had died shortly after the attack, which occurred about 9 p.m. Tuesday near an automated teller machine at a bank in Sherman Oaks.

Police said Foreman apparently had withdrawn cash from the ATM and was getting into her white 1984 BMW, parked about 40 feet away from the machine.

Los Angeles Detective Stephen Fisk said she was approached by a man who demanded her car and stabbed her in the abdomen. Fisk said that Foreman, a self-employed beautician, managed to trigger her car alarm, which probably caused her attacker to flee without the vehicle.

A man shopping at a nearby mini-mall heard Foreman’s screams for help, rushed to her side and moments later dialed 911, Detective Daniel DeJarnette said.

She died at 10:41 p.m. Wednesday night at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, Fisk said. “It’s just getting sickening out there,” Fisk said. Police on Thursday were searching for the man who helped Foreman after her attack in order to interview him.

DeJarnette said that before she died, Foreman described her assailant and told police “that he said he wanted the vehicle.”

Whether Foreman refused her assailant’s demand remained unknown Thursday, but police said there were no signs of a struggle. Foreman’s purse was taken in the robbery, but police found her cosmetics and identification scattered within 30 feet from where she was stabbed. No weapons were recovered.

DeJarnette said that Foreman’s assailant may have picked his victim based on her size. At 5 foot 2 and 100 pounds, Foreman was much smaller than several women that a video camera inside the ATM showed had used the machine just before Foreman, DeJarnette said. DeJarnette described the area surrounding the ATM as “dimly lit” and said the lack of lighting may have contributed to the incident.

Police said the suspected assailant is a black man in his 30s, about 5-foot-9, weighing about 165 pounds and wearing a red beanie cap, a blue jacket and possibly a blue sweater, said DeJarnette. Police said they are also investigating the possibility that an accomplice was involved.

Foreman lived in Sherman Oaks with her boyfriend, Bobby Brock, known as Bobby Rock in the music industry. Brock said he is a drummer for singers Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, twin sons of the late Rick Nelson. He and Foreman had met a year ago, Brock said.

“It was a very intense relationship,” Brock said. “We accomplished as much in one year as many people do in a lifetime.”

Thursday morning, Foreman’s father, Alex Foreman, 62, quietly expressed his anger at the man who killed his “vibrant” only daughter.

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

Foreman said his daughter was born on July 22, 1963, in Downey and grew up in Orange. He said his daughter recently had been trying to break into the entertainment business--getting together a band and hiring an agent.

Walter Otto, principal at Villa Park High, on Thursday remembered Foreman as a “very, very pretty girl . . . a fairly quiet kid with half a dozen or so close friends.”

Brock, the victim’s boyfriend, said: “Words can’t describe the combination of sorrow and absolute rage we are feeling. How do we express the magnitude of this tragedy? It involved not only a young, innocent girl, but also the life of a child. It’s beyond comprehension.”

The public should know about the crime, he said, to awaken them to the deterioration of society and to help apprehend the murderer.