Gang Member Held in Slaying

Federal agents and sheriff’s deputies raided an Athens apartment Saturday and arrested a Compton gang member suspected of fatally shooting Yetunde Price, the half sister of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams.

The arrest of Robert Maxfield, 23, came just days after investigators publicly identified him as the suspected gunman in the Sept. 14 attack.

They had been tracking him since October, when witnesses identified him as the man who fired an AK-47 assault rifle at a sport utility vehicle, killing Yetunde Price as she and her boyfriend drove through Compton.

Investigators had staked out and raided locations in Compton and Las Vegas without success.

At 4:30 p.m. Saturday, sheriff’s deputies and officers from the U.S. marshal’s fugitive task force swarmed the apartment on Normandie Avenue near Imperial Highway.

Maxfield was booked at the Norwalk sheriff’s station on suspicion of first-degree murder and held without bail, said Deputy David Cervantes.

Authorities said Maxfield was a member of the Southside Crips. He is the second Crips member arrested in connection with the shooting. Aaron Michael Hammer, 24, arrested Sept. 15, was ordered last month to stand trial on murder charges.

Price, 31, a divorced mother of three who lived in Corona, was shot shortly after midnight outside an alleged Crips drug house, not far from the tennis courts where Serena and Venus learned to play tennis. Price’s boyfriend, Rolland Wormley, 28, who was driving her SUV that night, was not injured. He managed to drive Price to his mother’s house, where they called police. Price died at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center.

At first, authorities said the SUV had stopped outside the reputed drug house in the 1100 block of East Greenleaf Boulevard and that an argument had ensued. Sheriff’s deputies later said the vehicle might not have stopped. Wormley, a parolee convicted of drug and firearm offenses and listed in police files as a gang member, said the car was fired on without provocation.

Known to friends as “Tunde,” Price graduated from Lynwood High School in 1990, and opened a hair salon in Lakewood after working as a nurse. On occasion, she served as a personal assistant to her sisters.

Sheriff’s deputies said they would hold a news conference today about Maxfield’s arrest.