Features

Berkeley City College student Andrew Hoeft-Edenfield pleaded not guilty Monday to murder charges at the Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland. 

Judge Morris Jacobson set Hoeft-Edenfield’s pretrial date for Oct. 22. 

The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office charged Hoeft-Edenfield with the stabbing death of UC Berkeley nuclear engineering student Chris Wootton last spring. 

Wootton, 21, a Sigma Pi fraternity member, was stabbed once in his upper chest, between his ribs, in front of a group of students outside the Chi Omega sorority house on Piedmont Avenue on May 3.  

Hoeft-Edenfield, 20, was arrested later that day.  

Conflicting statements from witnesses present at the murder scene have not yet led to any definite conclusions as to what happened on the night of the fateful incident.  

Jacobson turned down Hoeft-Edenfield’s request for bail on Aug. 18 on the grounds that the evidence presented in the case had not convinced him that Hoeft-Edenfield had acted in self-defense.