Alleged child abuser kills himself as marshals close in, authorities say

A violin teacher facing high-profile accusations of sexually assaulting girls in Britain shot himself to death early Tuesday as U.S. marshals with a warrant closed in on his Sherman Oaks home, officials said.

Christopher Ling, a teacher from Manchester, England, faced extradition to his homeland to answer accusations that he abused as many as 10 girls while he taught at a music school during the 1980s.

Agents from the U.S. Marshals Service were about to serve a warrant to take the 56-year-old Ling into custody at his home on Dixie Canyon Place, said Laura Vega, a spokeswoman for the marshals service in Los Angeles. Vega said that when the marshals arrived at the home at about 6 a.m., they discovered Ling dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Vega said Ling had been running a talent company in Los Angeles.

Ling taught at the Chetham School of Music and had refused a Manchester police request to return to England for questioning. Ling taught at the school until 1990. Many of his alleged victims, quoted by Britain’s Guardian newspaper, said the teacher groomed them as teens and repeatedly molested them.

The newspaper described Ling as causing a stir when he arrived at Chetham, wearing a “white leather jacket, cowboy boots and luxuriant moustache. Wearing shirts often unbuttoned to reveal a medallion, the new strings teacher was hard to miss.”

The Guardian reported that early on Ling was known for working extra hours with his students, asking them to attend musical courses at his home during the holidays, but also taking “his young stars” to drink at pubs. He had a reputation for having a good eye for talent, eventually becoming the most sought violin teacher at Chetham.

Four women who spoke to the Guardian in 2013 said Ling began “grooming them for sexual activity by asking them to play naked, and sometimes attempted to take naked photos of them in a makeshift photography studio he had set up in his house.”

Two years ago, the Guardian reported that one of its reporters visited Ling’s home in the San Fernando Valley. Arriving in a black Jaguar, Ling confirmed that he had received an email from the Guardian seeking comment on the allegations, the newspaper reported.

“He said he had nothing to say and asked the reporter to get off this property, and never return, before closing the garage door,” the Guardian reported, adding that since 1992 Ling had run an agency representing conductors and classical soloists.

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