Venus and Serena Williams were at the height of their careers when their sister was murdered.

Serena Williams and Venus Williams have lived quite the life in the spotlight.

Many people would know the famous story of their father Richard Williams watching TV in 1978, seeing Virginia Ruzici win the French Open and earn more than $20,000 prize money, then turning to his wife Oracene and suggesting they have more kids and turn them into professional tennis players.

But what some people may not be aware of, is the fact Serena and Venus' sister Yetunde Price was murdered. And it's something neither Serena nor Venus has spoken about much – that is until recently.

Their parents Richard and Oracene both had children separately before they married – Richard had five from his first marriage, although he didn't have any contact with them, and Oracene had three daughters from her first marriage. And Yetunde Price was the eldest in this trio.

In 1980, Richard and Oracene married, and soon welcomed their first child together, Venus. Serena was born a year later.

Soon after Serena's birth, Richard decided to move the family to Compton, a part of Los Angeles which was notorious for its crime and gang culture, because he felt it would give his daughters "a fighter’s mentality". 

"How much easier would it be to play in front of thousands of white people if they had already learned to play in front of scores of gang members?" he pointed out in his 2014 book Black And White: The Way I See It.

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Richard wanted the two girls to become "rough and tough and strong", but even he started to wonder if he'd made a mistake by moving to Compton, where the family were "trapped in the middle of daily gun battles and shootouts".

"A little black girl was shot in the back of the head by a store owner who killed her for stealing a bottle of orange juice," he wrote in his book. "It took me only a couple of months to realise I was in the middle of hell and only God could help me now."

Then in 1991, Richard uprooted his family to enrol both Venus and Serena in a beach tennis academy in Florida, where they trained, "six hours a day, six days a week for four years". Richard's plan to make Venus and Serena into tennis champions was a spectacular success, with the sisters going on to win 30 Grand Slam singles titles between them. 

But his decision to move the family to Compton in the early 1980s had a tragic consequence. Because although Serena and Venus moved away from Compton to train, much of their wider family decided to stay in the area, including Oracene's daughter Yetunde.

Yetunde worked as a nurse and looked after her three children, living in the Compton neighbourhood. And on one night in 2003, she was chatting to her boyfriend, who was sat in the parked car with her. Suddenly, shots were fired from an AK-47, wielded by a gang member defending a drug house.

Serena and Yetunde in 2003, just before Yetunde's death. Image: Getty.

Yetunde's boyfriend drove away as soon as he could, and did not immediately realise that Yetunde had been shot dead, driving her to a relative's home, where he then discovered the severity of the situation and called emergency services. She died from a bullet wound to the head. 

She was 31, and the attack took place just across the road from the tennis courts where her half-sisters had learned to play tennis.

"Next thing you know, I see flashes to my side. I don't know if it's from the front or the side… I don't know how many shots were fired. I don't even know what race or creed [the attackers] were," Yetunde's boyfriend told The Los Angeles Times.

"I didn't look once at my lady. I'm trying to get through this. I'm trying to get away, I'm trying to get her to safety… I see the back window is shattered. I look to the right and said, 'Baby, are you all right?' I look at Tunde, and there was blood everywhere."

Four months after her death, police charged a man over her death – a then 25-year-old Robert Edward Maxfield, who was a member of the Crips gang. Prosecutors alleged that he fired because he mistook Yetunde's car for a rival gang member's. He pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2006. By 2018, he was out of jail on parole.

In 2016, the Williams family opened the Yetunde Price Resource Centre, just steps from where she was murdered and the public tennis courts where Venus and Serena Williams first learned the game. The centre is designed to help victims of violence and support their families in hopes of breaking the cycle of violence in their community.

Opening the community centre in Compton provided a form of healing for the family. During the ribbon cutting, Serena Williams said: "We definitely wanted to honour our sister's memory because she was a great sister, she was our oldest sister, and obviously she meant a lot to us.

"And it meant a lot to us, to myself and to Venus and my other sisters as well, Isha and Lyndrea, that we've been wanting to do something for years in memory of her, especially the way it happened, a violent crime."

Watch: Venus Williams on how the death of her older sister impacted her. Post continues below.

Serena told TIME magazine interviewer Sean Gregory that she struggled with the news of Maxfield's parole, conflicted by whether she should feel angry or not.

"No matter what, my sister is not coming back for good behaviour," she said. "It's unfair that she'll never have an opportunity to hug me. But also… the Bible talks about forgiveness. I would like to practice what I preach, and teach Olympia [Serena's daughter] that as well. I want to forgive. I have to get there. I'll be there."

Yetunde's three children were aged 11, nine and five years old when their mother died.

"It was hard because all I think about is her kids," Williams told TIME, "and what they meant to me. And how much I love them."

Last year, the movie about Serena and Venus' career and family was released, King Richard. In the film, Yetunde's murder is touched on – and watching an actor play Yetunde was overwhelming for Serena. 

"I think I cried the whole time," she told Red Table Talk. "Whenever she came on film, I just... personally, I just started, like... I mean, even still."

Recently on a panel on stopping violence, Venus spoke about the impact of losing Yetunde. 19 years on, Venus said the emotions are still at the forefront.

"It's not easy. Obviously violence has hit very close to home in our family. But the best part of it all is that we have memories and through it we become stronger and through it we're able to help other people. We've tried to turn that pain into hope. And that's very important."

Image: Getty.