As Serena Williams faced the worst defeat of her career after going against Johanna Konta in San Jose, California, late last month ,she says she could not help but think about something far removed from the court: Robert Edward Maxfield, the man sent to prison for killing her older sister Yetunde Price 15 years earlier.
“I couldn’t shake it out of my mind,” Williams, 36, said in a recent interview with TIME, which marked her first public comments about Maxfield. He was paroled in March, and Price’s slaying was thrust back into the spotlight after his release became public on July 31.
Williams told TIME she learned about it that same day, some 10 minutes before she was set to start her match against Konta in San Jose.
Referring to Price’s three children, all under the age of 13 when she died, Williams said
: “It was hard because all I think about is her kids, and what they meant to me. And how much I love them.”
Maxfield was unsuccessfully tried twice for murder in Price’s 2003 shooting death before he pleaded no-contest to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, for which he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
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