Man Arrested in Follow-Home Tarzana Slaying : Crime: Police traced cellular phone calls to a Norwalk resident suspected of stalking patrons of card clubs. His girlfriend is also being held.

A Norwalk man was charged Friday with murdering a Tarzana businessman and trying to kill a Pasadena man during a series of follow-home robberies targeting card club patrons.

Avery Anthony Bryant, 21, could face the death penalty in connection with the April 6 slaying of George Banafsheha, 35, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Shellie Samuels.

Police said Banafsheha, who was returning home about 3 a.m. from playing poker at the Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens, was shot to death as he waited for the electronic gate to open outside his condominium complex in the 18100 block of Burbank Boulevard.

Bryant is to be arraigned Monday in Van Nuys Municipal Court on charges of murder, attempted murder and nine counts of robbery.

Samuels said police raided Bryant’s apartment Thursday and found jewelry and cellular telephones reported stolen in five follow-home robberies, including the Banafsheha holdup. Tracing calls placed on the cellular phones led police to Bryant, Los Angeles Police Detective Rick Swanston said.

Police believe Bryant and another person who drove him stalked the victims, usually in a black Jeep, from the card clubs to their homes, robbing them when they slowed or stopped to enter driveways, Swanston said.

Arrested with Bryant was his girlfriend, Judy Starwood, 31, who was charged with receiving stolen property.

Samuels said that although Starwood has not been charged in the robberies, police are still investigating her role “because she was his girlfriend and she has a black Jeep registered in her name.”

The robberies Bryant is charged with began March 2 when three women returning home from gambling at the Bicycle Club were robbed just outside their Mar Vista home by a man wearing a ski mask, police said.

The next day, a Gardena man was robbed in the same way on his arrival home from the Normandie Club in Gardena. On March 4, a man and a woman who had been gambling at the Bicycle Club were robbed near their home on Balboa Island.

Several hours before Banafsheha was slain, a Pasadena man returning home from the Bicycle Club was shot at and then robbed by an assailant wearing a ski mask, police said.

In a sixth robbery--in which the victim was not followed home--Bryant is charged with taking a cellular telephone at gunpoint May 26 from a shopper at the Lakewood Mall.