Tributes pour in for 'Dr. Boomer,' Castlemont math teacher killed in Oakland chase

Yahoo

01-06-2025

OAKLAND, Calif. - On the day that he was killed – caught up as an innocent bystander in a CHP pursuit of a stolen car suspect – Castlemont High School math teacher Marvin Boomer was dressed in a plaid jacket and tie.
Boomer was participating in an Urban Design Academy Pathway project that involved students giving presentations on the sustainability of the Coliseum stadium. Ray Bobbitt, founder of the African American Sports Entertainment Group, was there.
"He looked like a Harvard professor," his Castlemont colleague, George Arterberry, said on Friday night as more than 100 people came out to mourn his death. "And he wanted these kids to know this: that it matters. He dressed like it was an inauguration. Nobody else does that."
That was just one of the many stories colleagues, students and strangers told about Boomer, 40, who was killed in a freak accident on Wednesday at 7:45 p.m. at East 21st Street and Park Boulevard while he was taking an evening stroll with his girlfriend – hours after that Urban Design Academy presentation.
But just as he was walking on the sidewalk, California Highway Patrol officers were in pursuit of an 18-year-old who they say stole an Infiniti G35 and then was driving "recklessly" in an attempt to evade police.
The teenage driver, Eric Hernandez-Garcia, ended up striking a minivan with two people inside, and then, five blocks later, a parked car, a tree and a fire hydrant, which ended up getting knocked off its base and flying into Boomer – some of which was captured on a neighbor's Ring video.
Water spewed all over the neighborhood. Boomer's girlfriend went up the stairs to a pastor's home to get help.
But it was too late. Boomer had died.
Hernandez-Garcia was charged with seven felonies on Friday, including vehicular manslaughter, to which he did not enter a plea. Castlemont High also held its graduation of seniors earlier in the day, and at 6 p.m., many of his students and co-workers gathered at the site where he was killed.
People praised Boomer's brilliance, his humility and his love of the underserved community in which he had called home for nearly a decade, after moving to Oakland from Memphis, Tenn.
"Memphis is a lot like Oakland, just bigger and Blacker," Arterberry said, noting that they had both worked at Castlemont High for eight years, two doors down from each other. "So he knew this kind of ZIP code. So he took to the 'Deep East' very quickly. And this man was a master degree Black math teacher."
Arterberry described Boomer's math class as the place to be.
The blinds were closed. Soft jazz played. Boomer lit up a lava lamp.
"And his class was just getting off on doing math," Arterberry said. "It was very chill."
Several students, current and former, said that Boomer was the only math teacher who made the subject understandable for them. He also had a sense of humor. One student referred to him as "Mr. Boom Boom."
Only one speaker took to the microphone to bring up the highly controversial matter of police chases, as the issue has been thrust into the spotlight by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who implored Oakland in December 2024 to loosen its chase policies to that of the CHP, where officers can pursue suspects for crimes that are not violent.
Newsom and others say that Oakland is a magnet for criminals who know they can get away with stealing property if law enforcement won't go after them.
But advocates of Oakland's more strict pursuit policy point to tragedies like the one that befell Boomer as a reason to abort a chase if it's not an urgent matter of life or death.
A man who identified himself as Jaime from Dare to Struggle Bay Area, said that it's "really upsetting" not to place blame for Boomer's death on the CHP.
But Cat Brooks, founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project and the organizer of the vigil, quickly shut him down, saying that Boomer's family and friends did not want to shadow the event with talk of politics and blame.
Instead, the crowd was there to honor a man who held education on a pedestal.
Boomer – Dr. Boomer – as many people called him, earned his Master's degree in teaching from Belmont University and a PhD in philosophy and educational research and policy analysis from North Carolina State University, according to his LinkedIn.
He was hired at Castlemont High in 2017 and has been there ever since.
One friend, who was wearing a "Danger: Education Black Man" shirt, described how he loved having long talks with Boomer about a variety of deep subjects.
"Boomer was a Black man and he was a doctor," his friend said. "That's even more rare than a unicorn. We lost a star here and this did not have to happen."
In addition to loving school and his students, friends described Boomer as a foodie and a God-fearing man. They said he had no biological children, but he poured that fatherly energy into his students.
Arterberry mentioned that Boomer had two brothers who died and had two or three sisters. Boomer's girlfriend, who was injured in the pursuit, did not appear to be at the vigil.
But many of his "Castle" colleagues were, as were Councilwoman Charlene Wang and state Assemblywoman Mia Bonta.
That includes Castlemont teacher Brenda Franklin, who saw him after his Coliseum presentation on Wednesday, when he shared a bit of his celebratory Raising Cane's lemonade with him.
She called him "brilliant," a "visionary," a "leader."
Franklin also said that Boomer encouraged her to go back to school to get her masters.
She recalled a time when he came to her house for six hours to help her apply to school.
"You can go to school, you can get your masters," she recalled him saying.
She earned her higher degree last June.
"I got in graduate school, y'all, because of Dr. Boomer believing in me," she said. "I might go get my doctorate now in the name of him.