Police closed off a Northeast Baltimore neighborhood and surrounded a house where gunfire erupted last night, and found two people dead after tense hours of trying to make contact with the people inside.

The victims were a woman and a man believed to have been her boyfriend, who forced his way into the home in the 3200 block of Beverly Road about 7:45 p.m., police said.

Police were alerted by neighbors to a domestic dispute, and arriving officers saw teen-age girls run toward them saying their mother's boyfriend had barged into the house, provoking a heated exchange between the pair.

As the officers spoke with the girls, they heard two gunshots from the second floor and called for help -- bringing dozens of other officers to the Beverly Hills neighborhood.

Officers surrounded the house, which was illuminated by a helicopter spotlight, and cordoned off a two-block radius. Over four hours, officers tried to make contact with the man, and after getting no response, fired tear gas inside about midnight and entered.

They found the bodies of the 34-year-old man and 37-year-old woman in a room, both dead with gunshot wounds to the head. They also found the woman's 7-year-old daughter in her wheelchair, unharmed.

"Nothing like this ever happens around here," said seven-year resident Mary Baus. "You know, the mayor lives around here," she said.

About 8 p.m., Baus said, she heard a teen-age girl running down Beverly Road screaming, "He shot her! He shot her! My mother's still in there!" Baus said she and her three children stepped onto the porch and saw the crying girl running to officers as they pulled up in their cruisers.

Earlier in the evening, homicide detectives were investigating a shooting in West Baltimore that left two men dead -- each with a single gunshot wound to the head in the Rosemont neighborhood.

Police were called to the 1400 block of Bloomingdale Road about 5:45 p.m. after receiving a call about a shooting.

They arrived to find a man dead on the sidewalk with a gunshot wound to the head. The second man was found a short distance away, near Longwood Street and Belmont avenues, where he had managed to run after being shot in the head, police said.

He died later at Maryland Shock Trauma Center.