Suspect Enters Plea in 2012 Murder of Hayward Teen

CASTRO VALLEY, CA - A man who’d been on the run for more than three years before he was finally arrested last October pleaded not guilty Monday to a charge that he murdered a 16-year-old boy in East Oakland in 2012.

Kejuan Hill, who’s now 21, is charged in the fatal shooting of Charles Hill III of Hayward in the 2500 block of Church Street, near the Eastmont Town Center, shortly after 10 p.m. on March 23, 2012. Charles Hill III was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later.

Oakland police said the victim and the suspect knew each other but weren’t related.

Kejuan Hill was arrested last Oct. 26 by a U.S. Marshals-Kansas City Police Task Force at a Denny’s Restaurant in Kansas City., Mo., where he was working under his brother’s name, according to a Marshals spokesman.

Oakland police had issued a warrant for Hill’s arrest a few weeks earlier.

A Marshals spokesman said Hill told officers that he’d been in the Kansas City area since the week following the fatal shooting of Charles Hill III.

The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting Kejuan Hill as an adult even though he was only 17 at the time of the fatal shooting.

At a brief hearing Monday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Paul Delucchi scheduled a preliminary hearing for Hill on March 24. The hearing will determine if there’s enough evidence against Hill for him to be ordered to stand trial on the murder charge he faces.

--Bay City News