Reward Doubled in Carjack Slaying of Woman at ATM

The Los Angeles City Council and a Redondo Beach hospital Friday reacted to the stabbing death of a Sherman Oaks woman and her unborn fetus by more than doubling to $30,000 the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the woman’s killer.

“It is a tragedy which frustrates me to no end because it reflects the cheapness that loss of life has experienced,” Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said.

Tuesday evening, 29-year-old Sherri Foreman was getting into her BMW parked about 40 feet from an automated teller at a Great Western Bank in Sherman Oaks where she had just withdrawn money, police said, when she was approached by a man who demanded her car. The man stabbed her in the abdomen and then fled with her purse, police said.

Foreman, who lost her 13-week-old fetus immediately after the attack, died Wednesday night at Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

Los Angeles County coroner’s spokesman Scott Carrier said that an autopsy performed Friday determined that Foreman had suffered a single stab wound to her abdomen and that her fetus died as a result of the injury to its mother. Carrier said that a death certificate would not be issued for the fetus because it was less than 20 weeks old.

Foreman’s father, Alex Foreman of Westminster, said that, based on the wound, he believed the suspect used a blunt object, such as a screwdriver or crowbar, to kill his daughter. Detective Stephen Fisk of the Los Angeles Police Department said the weapon was not a crowbar, but he declined further comment on the subject.

Fisk said that a bank videotape shows the shadow of a pedestrian, possibly the suspect, loitering near a bus stop in the background as Foreman made her ATM transaction. Detectives on Friday were also looking for two girls, described as being in their mid-teens, believed to have been at the intersection of Woodman Avenue and Riverside Drive between 7 and 7:30 on the night of the stabbing, Fisk said.

City Council members unanimously approved offering a $12,500 reward Friday to match a reward of the same amount offered by Great Western Bank officials. Meanwhile, officials at South Bay Hospital, where Alex Foreman is an employee, have offered $5,000, raising the total reward to $30,000.

“This crime should not go unpunished,” said Dennis Bruns, executive director of the hospital.

Great Western officials said that last year, the same bank was robbed four times. However, nobody was injured in the robberies that occurred inside the bank building.

Great Western spokesman Steve Hawkins said that since the attack on Foreman, another customer has notified bank officials that he was robbed recently after making a withdrawal from the same ATM.

Following the attack, police noted that the bank’s parking lot was “dimly lit.” Fisk said he was told by Great Western executives, who rent the building, that they have repeatedly asked the owners to improve the lighting and landscape surrounding the structure to make the area safer.

Foreman was the third person to die in attempted or actual carjackings in the San Fernando Valley during the last month. Before she died, the self-employed beautician described her assailant and told police that he said he wanted her car.

Police describe the killer as a black man in his 30s, about 5 feet, 9 inches tall, weighing about 165 pounds and wearing a red knit hat, a blue jacket and possibly a blue sweater. Police ask that anyone who was near Woodman and Riverside between 8 and 9 p.m. Tuesday call Los Angeles police detectives at (818) 989-8377.