Murder of Yetunde Price

Yetunde Hawanya Tara Price (née Rasheed; August 9, 1972 – September 14, 2003) was the eldest of Oracene Price's five daughters and a maternal half-sister of tennis players Venus and Serena Williams. She worked as a nurse, owned a hair salon, and also served as a personal assistant to her tennis-playing sisters, a role that included appearing at Wimbledon in the year of her death. According to media reports, Price accepted some financial assistance from her sisters but continued to live with her three children in a "run-down" district of the Los Angeles area, described by reports as being "determined to pay her own way in the world."

On the night of September 14, 2003, Price was sitting in her SUV with her fiancé, parked outside a house in suburban Compton, Los Angeles County, that was later revealed to be a crack house. Two members of the South Side Compton Crips street gang, who were guarding the house, opened fire on the SUV. Prosecutors at the subsequent trial said the gunmen believed they were "defending [the] crack house from gangland rivals," presumably a rival gang. Price's boyfriend, who said he did not initially realize she had been shot, drove her to a relative's home and called emergency services from there. Price was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital, from a bullet wound to the head. Both the prosecution and the defense at the murder trial agreed that Price was an innocent victim who happened to be passing through the area.

Robert Edward Maxfield, a member of the Southside Compton Crips, was tried for the killing. His first trial ended in a mistrial in November 2004, with jurors split six for acquittal, five for guilt, and one undecided. A second trial ended in another mistrial on April 29, 2005, with jurors deadlocked 11–1 in favor of conviction. A murder charge against a second defendant, accused of also firing a handgun during the incident, was dismissed after the first trial when authorities determined he had not caused the fatal wound. On March 22, 2006, the day before his third trial was set to begin, Maxfield, then 25, pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter. On April 6, 2006, Judge Steven Suzukawa sentenced him to 15 years in prison with the possibility of parole.

Maxfield was released on parole on March 8, 2018, from the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, California, after serving approximately 12 years. He was re-arrested later that year for violating parole. Serena Williams said she learned of his release through Instagram just minutes before a tennis match at the 2018 Silicon Valley Classic, which she went on to lose. In 2016, the Williams sisters opened the Yetunde Price Resource Center, a community center in Compton for victims of violence and their families. Compton rapper the Game dedicated his 2005 song "Dreams" to Price's memory, and she was portrayed by actress Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew in the 2021 biographical film "King Richard."