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New: Defendent's Friend is Reluctant Witness at Berkeley Student Murder Trial

By Bay City News
Monday April 12, 2010 - 03:43:00 PM

A friend of a man accused of murdering University of California at Berkeley student Christopher Wootton near campus two years ago is testifying today as a reluctant prosecution witness in the case. 

Christopher Wilcox, under questioning by prosecutor Connie Campbell, said he came to court because he was subpoenaed Saturday night after his band's show. 

Wilcox said he didn't return recent phone calls from Campbell's investigator because "I lost my phone," saying, "I've been hard to get ahold of." 

Campbell told jurors in her opening statement in the case last month that Wilcox was with 22-year-old Andrew Hoeft-Edenfield in the early morning hours of May 3, 2008, when she alleges Hoeft-Edenfield stabbed to death 21-year-old Christopher Wootton in the parking lot of a sorority house near campus. 

Campbell said the stabbing occurred after Wootton and his friends got into a drunken shouting match with Hoeft-Edenfield and his friends. 

Hoeft-Edenfield's attorney, Yolanda Huang, told jurors that she will ask them to deliver a not-guilty verdict at the end of the case because she believes Hoeft-Edenfield acted in self-defense after he was outnumbered and surrounded by Wootton and a large group of Wootton's friends. 

Asked by Campbell today if he was in court to support  

Hoeft-Edenfield, Wilcox said, "Yes ma'am." 

Asked if he threw a subpoena into a trash can when he was served in 2008, Wilcox said, "I'm not sure." 

Wootton, who was from Bellflower in Southern California, was only a few weeks away from graduating with honors in nuclear engineering when he was killed.