U.S. Student Killed by a Mob in South Africa : Violence: Newport Beach woman is pulled from her car and stabbed to death near Cape Town. She was a crusader against apartheid.

A white Newport Beach woman studying in South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship was dragged from her car and stabbed to death Wednesday by a black mob in a township near Cape Town, only a few days before she was due to return home, authorities said.

Amy Elizabeth Biehl, 26, was driving three black colleagues from the University of Western Cape to their homes in nearby Guguletu township when her car was stoned by black youths, Lt. Jonathan Vanderrheede said.

An official of the African National Congress, Allan Boesak, told the Associated Press that the youths stopped the vehicle, pulled Biehl from the car and hit her in the face with half a brick.

When she tried to flee, they stabbed her several times in the head. One of her companions, Singiswa Bevu, a black woman, asked the youths why they were attacking her and was told “because she is a settler,” meaning that she was white, Boesak said.

A native of New Mexico and a graduate of Stanford University, Biehl was a Fulbright exchange scholar at the University of Western Cape’s Community Law Center. She was due to return to Newport Beach on Saturday. Family members said she planned to attend Rutgers University in New Jersey beginning next week.

Her mother, Linda Biehl, 50, described her daughter as caring, athletic and an “extremely hard-working” student and intellectual whose attempt to understand South Africa and its people had become her life’s goal.

“She was a great gal,” said Linda Biehl, breaking into tears. “She wanted to give herself to the African people. She was totally interested in (them). . . . She wanted to do whatever she could do to help them.”

South African police told The Times they had few details about the incident. “It’s very seldom that people come forward to (file a) report when something like this happens,” Vanderrheede said.

But education officials in Washington and leaders of the African National Congress joined in condemning the killing.

At a news conference, Boesak said the slaying was “racially inspired” and carried out by what he believed were supporters or members of the militant Pan Africanist Congress.

“It clearly shows that this is a racially inspired killing which bodes extremely badly for our relations countrywide,” he said, noting that the incident might spawn further racial violence and create problems for talks being held to end white minority rule.

It was the injustice of minority rule and South Africa’s apartheid system that had caused Biehl to devote herself to helping change the system, her mother and officials said.

Linda Biehl said her daughter became interested in the politics and people of southern Africa after enrolling in the international relations program at Stanford.

When she graduated with honors in 1989, she was intent on pursuing her passion for Africa, her mother said. Biehl secured a job in 1990 as a program assistant at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Washington, D.C. There, she worked to help establish programs aimed at promoting and strengthening democratic institutions in South Africa, officials said.

At the University of Western Cape, Biehl worked tirelessly with the ANC Women’s League and the National Assn. of Democratic Lawyers “to advance the cause of the oppressed and particularly of women,” said Dullah Omar, director of the Community Law Center and a member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee.

Both Omar and officials in Washington said they were saddened by Biehl’s death.

Robert LaGamma, director of African Affairs for the U.S. Information Agency, which coordinates the Fulbright and several international exchange programs, described Biehl’s death as a “terrible, terrible loss.”

“It’s a great tragedy that someone with such promise, as idealistic as she appeared to be, was caught up in what seemed to be an act of spontaneous violence in a country that has been known in recent time for political violence,” LaGamma said.

Linda Biehl said she often watched television broadcasts about violence in South Africa’s townships and frequently urged her daughter to be careful.

On Wednesday, Biehl’s worst fears were realized when she received a telephone call from Princeton Lyman, the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa. He was calling to express his condolences.

“I was very worried about her,” Linda Biehl said, “but she would say, ‘Mom, I’m OK. I’m doing this because I want to do this. You can’t live your life in a shell.’ ”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.