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Fugitive Hollis Contacts Coach, Wilson Makes Court Appearance By MATTHEW ARTZ and J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR

Tuesday July 26, 2005

The young man who police say shot and killed Meleia Willis-Starbuck telephoned the former Berkeley High boys’ basketball coach over the weekend as he continued to hide from the law. 

Vincent Trahan, now the owner of Doggie High, a restaurant just across the street from Berkeley High, said he talked to Christopher Hollis over the weekend. 

Trahan said the 21-year-old graduate of Berkeley Alternative School seemed “scared” but refused to go into details about their conversation. 

He said Hollis didn’t tell him where he was hiding, and added “I didn’t want to know. I’m praying that he calls me or someone else he trusts to accompany him to the authorities.”  

Hollis never played on the basketball team, but made friends with Trahan at his restaurant, Trahan said. 

Christopher Wilson, who is also facing a murder charge in the July 17 death of Meleia Willis-Starbuck, was scheduled to be arraigned on Friday afternoon in Superior Court in Oakland, but formal arraignment was put off until Wednesday.  

Wilson is alleged to have driven the car in which Hollis was riding. 

Wilson and his attorney, Elizabeth Grossman of Berkeley, appeared Friday in a courtroom that was packed with spectators, many of them Wilson’s relatives. 

Several of them left the abbreviated hearing in tears, holding each other for comfort, walking through a barrage of television cameras and news reporters there to cover the first formal court appearance in this high-profile case. 

Grossman said that Wilson is being held without bail on a murder charge, and that on Wednesday she will ask for setting of what she called “a reasonable bail so that he can be home to help fight against these charges.” 

Grossman told reporters that she did not believe that a charge of murder “will be sustained. My client had no idea that any violence was intended or that Mr. Hollis had a gun in his possession.”