Warrant Issued for Teen at Hearing on Biehl Slaying

A teen-age boy accused of participating in the slaying of Amy Biehl, a Fulbright scholar from Newport Beach, failed to appear for a hearing Monday, and a judge issued a warrant for his arrest.

The 15-year-old, released earlier into his mother’s custody, was warned to appear in court to face charges in Biehl’s slaying.

Biehl, 27, was pulled from her car and killed by a mob shouting anti-white slogans Aug. 25 when she went to drop off a friend in the black township of Guguletu, near Cape Town.

Judge Gerald Friedman ordered that the missing youth not be identified by name because he is under 18.

Six accused men ages 19 to 23 stood silently in court during a brief hearing. They are being held without bail.

All seven suspects will be formally charged with murder, public violence and robbery at a hearing Nov. 22, prosecutor Nollie Niehaus said.

The indictment says that the seven, part of a group of about 40, stoned and overturned Biehl’s car. They allegedly assaulted her three friends, Sindiswa Bevu, Matsatsi Maceba and Everon Orange, by throwing stones and/or bricks at them.

The group is also alleged to have stolen a wristwatch, a camera and a backpack.

Biehl was killed two days before she was due to return home to the United States after working for a year at the mainly black University of the Western Cape.

About 25 relatives of the accused sat quietly in the public gallery of the wood-paneled courtroom.

Outside, a handful of their supporters gathered behind a police barbed-wire cordon and shouted racist slogans.