BERKELEY — The fatal stabbing of a UC Berkeley honors student from Bellflower left two families in anguish Sunday as they struggled to figure out how prefinals revelry had deteriorated into death and detention.
Although details of the fracas early Saturday were still being sorted out, the incident laid bare the two faces of this college town on San Francisco Bay -- the world-class university and multimillion-dollar hillside homes with sweeping views versus the poor and working-class bungalows and apartments of the flatlands.
Christopher Wootton, 21, an engineering student who was weeks from graduation, was supposed to spend Saturday with two of his closest friends, buying tickets for a summertime trip to Europe. Andrew Thomas Hoeft-Edenfield, 20, had planned to go car shopping with his dad.
Instead, Hoeft-Edenfield was arrested Saturday in connection with Wootton's death during an altercation under the broad trees of the university's fraternity row, and taken to Berkeley City Jail.
The victim, who lived in the Sigma Pi fraternity house at the base of the Berkeley hills, was about to graduate from one of the nation's top universities, and had his pick of full scholarships to pursue a master's degree in nuclear engineering.
His alleged assailant lived in a nondescript apartment with his divorced mother in the city's less affluent flatlands and attended Berkeley City College. His father said he had warned the young man to be wary of fraternity row, because of the availability of alcohol and the possibility of trouble.
For years, young people from the Berkeley flats and nearby Oakland have been drawn to the party scene of fraternity row, only to be rebuffed, setting up potential conflicts.
"Fraternities look down their noses at anyone from the flatlands," William Edenfield said in a Sunday afternoon interview outside his son's apartment building. "Lots of questions need answering. This is incomprehensible. I thought we were going car hunting Saturday morning. And instead I get a call from jail."
Still unclear Sunday was what exactly happened in Saturday's early hours, when Wootton was fatally stabbed in the chest with a knife in a sorority parking lot just blocks from campus.
According to a brief police statement, "Witnesses said that the suspect and victim were part of a larger group that was involved in a verbal exchange that quickly escalated to a physical fight. During the fight, the suspect stabbed Wootton, then fled. . . . He tossed a bloody knife that was later discovered by officers."
