Updated: 2:31 p.m. Aug. 14, 2026
The first time Skipp Townsend met Reginald Foreman, more than 20 years ago, he wasn’t impressed. The man known as B.A. seemed confident, cocky, even arrogant.
But years passed, and people change. Two months ago, Townsend hired Foreman to work at his community anti-violence nonprofit, 2nd Call.
“That’s when I met Reginald,” Townsend said. “That’s when I got to see who he was as a person, not just as the image he portrayed.”
On Aug. 6, the LAPD says a man walked up to Foreman near the corner of 59th Street and Crenshaw Boulevard and shot him. Townsend said he was working with a 2nd Call crew on a Destination Crenshaw streetscape project. Foreman died there on the sidewalk, according to county officials. He was 51 years old.
Along the curb of Crenshaw one week after Foreman’s death, white and blue devotional candles crowded in ranks around a wreath of flowers. Police said they have not yet made an arrest.
“This guy here was something special,” said Mike Dyer, who coached a girls’ softball team alongside Foreman. Foreman had coached little league baseball for years but moved to softball to support his nieces. Dyer watched him grow from coach, to mentor, to an uncle to all the girls on the team. “He was everything, man.”
The number of murders in LA is several times lower than the violent peak of the early ‘90s that still casts a shadow over communities like South LA. In 2025, the city’s homicide rate fell to its lowest point since 1966. LA police have credited their own crime-fighting efforts, though crime data analysts told CalMatters there’s no clear explanation for similar trends statewide and nationally.
To Townsend, the change in areas like South LA is in part due to the years of work 2nd Call and others have done to broker conversations between rival gangs. “It’s the sitting down, having a sandwich, a cup of coffee, talking. There are communities that will never shoot each other again,” Townsend said.
Foreman, who Townsend said was involved in community conflicts when he was younger, joined that work too, leveraging his influence as part of a peace agreement between two warring groups in 2019.
His death cut deep for Townsend. In two decades of working to turn down the heat of community violence, he had never seen a 2nd Call employee, one of his own guys, be killed on the job.
Foreman was first hired to work on streetscape projects, but Townsend said he’d also begun picking up late afternoon safe passage shifts in Leimert Park, on call to deescalate conflicts and keep the peace in the neighborhood without getting police involved.
Before he joined 2nd Call, Foreman had been working for a decade to redirect his life after seeing people around him die, his sister Amiee Johnson said.
“He got up every day to perfect the imperfections,” Johnson said. “He wanted to pour everything into the community.”
Foreman’s family is raising support for funeral and other expenses on GoFundMe.
He was a father and a grandfather. He bred French bulldogs, drove big rigs and never missed a Sunday church service. As he coached his niece’s team, he swore he’d train her into a scholarshipped college softball player.
“This was a guy who would give what he got, from the heart,” said LaVerne Kimball, who coached softball with him in Baldwin Hills. “He was rich in his spirit.”
And as much as he’d already changed his life as an adult, Johnson said he was still looking ahead. He had a job interview lined up with Metro, she said, and his daughter was starting her senior year of high school. He was going through the steps to open a group home, hoping to help young men transition out of prison or off of the street.
“He was more than what they made him to be on that Thursday,” Johnson said.
