Ramona Foreman, 48, known as "Mona" to her family and friends, was struck and killed by gunfire just before 7 p.m. on Wednesday, December 19, 2012, in the 9100 block of International Boulevard in East Oakland, only blocks from her home. She died at the scene. The Oakland Police Department investigated, and she was the city's 124th homicide victim of 2012.
Foreman was walking home with her sister after leaving a dollar store, along the north sidewalk in front of Oakland's 92nd Avenue Head
Start office, when gunfire erupted across the street. Police said the shooter or shooters fired from the other side of International Boulevard and that Foreman was not the target. She was caught in the crossfire. "Two people shooting; we don't know who they were, but we definitely know it wasn't meant for my momma," her daughter, Janetta Roberts, told ABC7.
Officers went door to door along International Boulevard the next day, interviewing neighbors and looking for leads. Sgt. Chris Bolton said police had not determined why the shots were fired or at whom. "We believe witnesses and information exist; we are urging people to come forward," he said. The shooting happened just over a block from where a cellphone store owner, Wilbur Bartley, had been killed less than two months earlier.
Foreman was the mother of two and grandmother of four, and the youngest of nine siblings. She cared for her elderly mother, and her family said she loved her grandchildren. "She was a sweet beautiful girl," her sister Lea Foreman said. "My Momma called her, her 'Sunshine Baby.'" A neighbor who passed the spot where she died said, "She was just a bystander but still her life is gone."
This stretch of International Boulevard is a busy commercial strip in East Oakland, with stores, a Head Start center and homes on the side streets. At 7 p.m. a week before Christmas, people would have been out shopping and heading home, and the people firing across the street likely had others around them who saw what happened.
Oakland was one of the most violent large cities in California in those years. The city recorded 148 homicides in 2006 and more than 100 in most years through 2013, and its police department solved far fewer of them than the statewide average. In 2010 and 2011, Oakland police cleared only about 30 percent of the city's homicides.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Ramona Foreman could be found in news archives or public records. More than 13 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. The Washington Post's homicide database, which tracked killings in Oakland from 2008 through 2017, lists the case as open with no arrest. Anyone who saw the two sides that were shooting at each other on International Boulevard that night, or who has heard who was involved, may be able to bring her family answers. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a car seen leaving the area or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call the Oakland Police Department Homicide Section at (510) 238-3821 or the homicide tip line at (510) 238-7950, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers of Oakland at (510) 777-8572.
