As her family made arrangements yesterday for funeral services, police officers arrested and charged a 19-year-old parolee with the murder of Nicole duFresne, a free-spirited actress who moved here from Minneapolis and was fatally shot on the Lower East Side last week.

The police took five teenage suspects into custody for questioning in connection with the shooting and later charged one of them, Rudy Fleming of Staten Island, with murder in the first and second degrees, along with robbery and criminal possession of a weapon. If convicted, Fleming could face a sentence of life in prison.

Fleming has been on parole since his release six months ago from Washington Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison in the upstate town of Comstock, where he served two years of a three-year sentence for carrying a gun to school, records show.

According to a letter in protest of his parole written by an assistant district attorney, Raymond Rodriguez, who handled his case in Staten Island, Fleming had been caught by school safety officers skipping school in November 2001 and was asked to remove his jacket before going to the bathroom. After initially declining to remove his jacket, which prosecutors described as big and puffy, Fleming “reached into his pants and pulled out a defaced .380 Hi Point Semi Automatic pistol,” the letter said. He then “immediately racked the slide and got into a shooting position.” The school safety officers talked Fleming into handing them his gun, according to the letter.

An attorney for Fleming had yet to be appointed as of yesterday evening. Members of his family also could not be reached.

Two other youths, David Simmon, 18, of Brooklyn, and a 15-year-old whose name was withheld because of his age, are also alleged to have witnessed the murder of the 28-year-old duFresne late Wednesday night. Mr. Simmon and the minor were charged in connection with an unrelated attempted robbery on the same night, police said. If convicted and tried as adults, both could face 15 years in prison.

A member of Mr. Simmon’s family declined to comment on his arrest. “He’ll tell his story in court,” the relative, who declined to identify herself, said.

The parents of duFresne’s fiance, Jeffrey Sparks, said they felt a sense of comfort upon learning that police had arrested the alleged killer.

“One has to feel relieved, yet that doesn’t bring her back,” Mr. Sparks’s mother, Donna Sparks, said in a telephone interview yesterday from her home in Murfreesboro, Tenn.

“Would you believe that I’ve been praying for those children and their mothers? Imagine the pain they must be going through,” she said.

Mr. Sparks, 28, and duFresne had been out with another couple drinking after 3:30 a.m. when they were approached outside 84 Clinton St. by a group of teenagers who demanded money. After Mr. Sparks refused, Fleming is alleged to have pistol-whipped him in the face.

As Mr. Sparks began to walk away, duFresne intervened and attempted to thwart the robbery, reportedly saying, “What are you gonna do, shoot me?”

She was struck and killed with one bullet in the chest. Fleming is also alleged to have snatched a purse belonging to a friend of duFresne, Mary Jane Gibson.

Two of the other teenagers who were in custody are believed to have been involved in duFresne’s murder but were not immediately charged, police said. Two female teenagers also were sought for questioning.

Of the teenagers arrested yesterday, four are related to each other and are believed to have spent time together at the Bernard M. Baruch Houses, the largest public-housing complex in Manhattan, with 17 buildings that house more than 5,000 residents between East Houston and Delancey streets.

The arrests followed a four-day hunt for suspects, with patrol cars circling around the crime scene at the corner of Clinton and Rivington streets, detectives knocking on neighbors’ doors, and police groups offering $4,000 in rewards for information. According to detectives in the 7th Precinct, which covers the Lower East Side, officers were finally led to Fleming, Mr. Simmon, and others by cobbling together surveillance-camera footage from a local restaurant and following tips. “Streets talk,” one plainclothes officer said yesterday outside the precinct house.