The 18-year-old girlfriend of the suspected shooter in the murder of the actress Nicole duFresne was charged with murder and robbery yesterday morning after police detectives escorted her back to New York from a small town in Maryland, where she allegedly had been hiding.

With the cooperation of her family members, the woman, Ashley Evans, agreed to surrender to the police and undergo questioning, police said. They said she fled from her home in Queens over the weekend to stay with other family members in Cheltenham, Md., a town with a population of about 2,000 just south of Washington.

After being questioned by detectives in a precinct for a brief period early yesterday, Ms. Evans was arrested and charged with murder and robbery, felony charges that could bring a sentence of life in prison if she is convicted.

As Ms. Evans began to snake through the criminal justice system yesterday, a court-appointed attorney had yet to be named. Her family members here also could not be reached.

Ms. Evans is the fifth teenager to be charged so far in the investigation of the murder of duFresne, 28, a free spirited actress from Minneapolis, who lived at Brooklyn. She was fatally shot once in the chest after trying to thwart a late-night robbery attempt against herself, her fiance, and another couple on the Lower East Side last week, police said. The criminal charges against the three male and two female teenagers are complex.

Two of the male teenagers, David Simmons, 18, and a 15-year-old, have been arrested and charged for an unrelated robbery that occurred on the same night duFresne was shot.

The alleged gunman in the slaying is Rudy Fleming, 19. He is alleged in court papers to have approached a pedestrian on Delancey Street and demanded the man’s coat. When the pedestrian refused, Fleming is alleged to have pistol-whipped him in the face.

Fleming, however, is not charged with his alleged involvement in that earlier robbery. Instead, he is charged with murder in the first and second degrees, along with robbery, in the later robbery. After the shot was fired, Fleming is alleged to have snatched a purse belonging to duFresne’s female friend, Mary Jane Gibson. He is also charged with criminal possession of a gun, a .357 Taurus revolver.

A court-appointed attorney for Fleming, Dennis Murphy, of the state’s Capital Defender Office, said the high-profile nature and widespread media attention surrounding duFresne’s murder should merit a certain caution in judgment.

“At this point in time, Rudy Fleming is innocent until proven guilty,” Mr. Murphy said. “There’s still a lot of information that has yet to be determined in this case.”

The other female teenager, a 14-year-old who was charged Tuesday, has been charged with murder in the second degree and robbery. She is alleged to have rummaged through the purse belonging to Ms. Gibson and stolen the woman’s cell phone.

If she is tried as an adult and convicted, the teenager, who turned herself into authorities at the urging of her mother, could face a life prison sentence. An attorney for the 14-year-old could not be reached yesterday.

The alleged role in the duFresne attack of Ms. Evans, the girlfriend, was more direct, according to police officials. After the shooting, Fleming is believed to have handed the alleged murder weapon to Ms. Evans, who then hid the gun in an apartment, where police said they later discovered it. She is also alleged to have stolen credit cards from Ms. Gibson’s purse.

Two additional male teenagers were taken into police custody, but there was not enough evidence to file charges against them, according to the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.

The five male teenagers whom police rounded up were all said to be relatives.