Arrest Made in Slaying of Onetime USC Athlete

Only five years ago, Audrey Gomez was a standout basketball player at USC, sharing the limelight with her younger sister Erica, an All-American at rival UCLA. After leaving school, she became a valued worker at a Los Angeles residential shelter for troubled youths.

Today, however, Gomez is dead and her supervisor at the shelter--a former LAPD officer--has been arrested on suspicion of shooting her to death in Whittier over the weekend.

Authorities said Tuesday that Angela H. Shepard, 37, who lives in unincorporated Whittier, was arrested early Sunday in connection with the death of Gomez, 28. Shepard, a program director at the Price Mid-Term Residential Shelter, is expected to be arraigned today in a Whittier courtroom, police said.

Attorney Bill Seki, who is representing Shepard, declined to comment.

“Right now we don’t have enough information to make a comment,” Seki said. “We are going to wait to see what, if anything, the police reports hold.”

Shepard was arrested at her home in the 15100 block of Hornell Street after Gomez’s body was discovered in the back seat of Gomez’s late-model Mazda 626 at Whittier’s Murphy Ranch Park. Detectives were called to the scene Saturday afternoon by the park’s caretaker, who noticed that the car hadn’t been moved all day.

The killing left police and co-workers confounded.

“We were floored when we heard about it,” said Jack Sheehan, a spokesman for Girls and Boys Town of Southern California, which operates the shelter on West 27th Street where Gomez and Shepard worked. “They were very good employees and the kids liked them.”

Whittier police spokesman Alan dela Pena added Tuesday, “There was some type of argument that led up [to the shooting], but we don’t know anything beyond that.”

Investigators said Gomez, who lived in Canyon Country, died of two gunshot wounds to the upper chest. Her body was found underneath a blanket in the car’s back seat.

Searching for clues, a sheriff’s bloodhound was brought to the park and, working from a scent picked up inside the car, led detectives about four miles to Shepard’s home, dela Pena said. There, detectives arrested her.

The police spokesman said the initial investigation by detectives suggests that the shooting may have occurred at the home and that Gomez’s body was then moved to the park.

Sheehan said Shepard was the shelter’s program director and supervised Gomez, herself a day-shift supervisor.

Shepard worked as a Los Angeles police officer from August 1989 to December 1995, when she left the department. An LAPD spokesman said she had been fired, but declined further comment, saying it was a confidential personnel matter.

Sheehan said Shepard joined Girls and Boys Town three years ago. The program is an extension of the famed Boys Town founded in 1917 in Omaha.

Gomez joined the organization 13 months ago and was a prized employee at the residential center, Sheehan said.

“When word went through the shelter [that Gomez was dead], there were tears,” he said.

Gomez, a 5-foot-8 native of Keyport, N.J., was a standout high school guard. After graduation from St. John Vianney High School, she played for two seasons at Notre Dame before transferring to USC in 1993. She was listed as a 1994-95 Adidas Blue Ribbon preseason All-American candidate. In her junior year, she averaged 8.5 points and 3.2 rebounds a game for the Trojans. A knee injury forced her to sit out one season.

In a profile issued by the university for the 1995-96 season, Gomez’s outside interests included working with the elderly and at a children’s hospital.

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Times staff writer Scott Glover contributed to this story.