Suspect in Carjack Killing of Pregnant Woman Captured

A man who has spent 14 of the last 17 years in prison has been arrested for 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 late Tuesday night as they were about to serve a search warrant at his apartment, which is 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 Chief Mark 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,” said Foreman 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 October and moved into an apartment with his girlfriend, Detective Stephen Fisk said. Jones had been at the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island and at the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth in Kansas, 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 spotted officers about 9:30 p.m. and fled down an alley and over a wall into a residential area, Fisk said. Police set up a perimeter and began searching by land and air for Jones, who was dressed in a T-shirt, pants and shower thongs when captured, Fisk said.

“He wasn’t ready for a long winter’s night,” Fisk said. Inside the apartment, detectives recovered a serrated six-inch paring knife believed to have been the weapon used in the stabbing, Kroeker said.

Detective Daniel DeJarnette said 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 County district attorney’s office, said that prosecutors would wait for evidence from detectives before filing charges. Gibbons said her office had no information on Jones’ earlier arrests and convictions.

Officials at Terminal Island federal penitentiary said Jones was sentenced to prison for bank robbery on Sept. 9, 1975, and that he was 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 of the Terminal Island prison. He was arrested again and put in prison in October, 1983.

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

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

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

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 performed on Foreman determined she had been stabbed once in the abdomen and that her fetus died as a result of the injury, Los Angeles County coroner’s officials said.

Foreman became the third person to die in a San Fernando Valley carjacking in less than a month.

Times staff writer Alicia Di Rado contributed to this story.