A Homewood man accused of killing a 15-year-old boy outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in January is an "associate" of a man charged in the slaying of a 12-year-old Wilkinsburg boy in April, Allegheny County police said yesterday.

Romeo Price, 19, was questioned in the April 18 shooting death of Kholen Germany, a crime that provoked public outrage. Kholen was struck, police said, when he darted into From Head to Toe, a clothing store on Wood Street, to dodge gunfire that allegedly came from Donald Wilson, 19. Police said yesterday that Mr. Wilson had some type of relationship with Mr. Price.

Detectives questioned Mr. Price because they thought he had witnessed the shooting. He was not charged in the slaying.

Mr. Wilson and Kevin L. Johnson, 23, face charges in the case, but police don't believe either man fired the fatal shot.

Mr. Price remained in the Allegheny County Jail yesterday after he was charged in the Jan. 29 killing of Ernest Tolliver, 15, who was in the front passenger seat of his mother's car in the restaurant's drive-through when a man opened fire on the vehicle.

Witnesses told Pittsburgh police they saw a man, later identified by police as Mr. Price, pull a black semiautomatic pistol from the waistband of his pants and fire at least three shots into the front passenger seat, according to an affidavit. The man then jumped over a wall and fled.

Police said after the incident that gang retaliation might have been behind Ernest's killing, and that the boy had ties to known gang members. Ernest's presence at an earlier Homewood shooting, they said, might have made him a target.