A city police officer shot and killed a knife-wielding man yesterday morning after the man had chased a woman through a Northwest Baltimore apartment complex and fatally stabbed her, according to city police.

The woman, Shenera Norris, 31, had two children, including a 1-year-old toddler with the man who stabbed her, police said.

Police have not identified the man they said stabbed the woman. "We're still trying to notify his family members," said Sterling Clifford, a police spokesman.

Neighbors and members of Norris' family were reluctant to talk with the media yesterday. Many came out and watched as detectives sifted through evidence at least three crime scenes. The shooting and stabbing occurred in the 4400 block of Fairview Ave.

Norris' body, covered with a white sheet, lay in the outdoor stairwell for several hours. Some cried out when police officers escorted Norris' teenage daughter into a patrol car.

Christopher Davis, a spokesman for the Greens at Forest Park apartment complex, said the man accused in the stabbing did not live at the apartment. In an e-mailed statement, he wrote in part: "Our hearts go out to her family. The community is fully cooperating with the police investigation."

One neighbor, who asked that her name not be used because she feared retribution from the attacker's friends, said she witnessed most of the incident.

About 9 a.m. she said, she heard a man causing a ruckus outside Norris' apartment in the 4400 block of Fairview Ave. in Forest Park.

"I saw him kicking her door," she said.

The woman called 911 and other neighbors came out of their apartments.

The man went into Norris' home, and then Norris came out of her apartment wearing only her underwear, the witness said.

Norris ran through a neighbor's open door. The man crashed through a window to follow her, according to the witness. "I heard him say, 'I'll pay for the window,'" the witness said. The window at a nearby apartment was broken yesterday morning.

After the man crashed though the window, Norris ran out the door and down a few doors into a third apartment.

The man, armed with a knife, followed Norris, according to the witness.

He tried to kick in the door at the third apartment but could not. Again he entered by crashing though the window, according to the witness.

At that point the man stabbed Norris. "Once he started stabbing her, people started scattering," the witness said. "She died in her underwear, running for her life."

The witness then saw Norris' body fall from the first-floor window. "I'm going to see this body falling out of the window forever," the witness said.

Police representatives could not confirm all of the details that the woman gave, but they did say that Norris "ran into several places."

Officer Nicole Monroe, a police spokeswoman, said officers came to the house for a reported aggravated assault about 9 a.m. When they arrived, they saw Norris' body outside the house and a neighbor told them that the man who stabbed her was still in the house.

Police went into the house and the man, still holding a knife, lunged toward an officer, Monroe said. The officer shot the man in the upper body. The man was pronounced dead about 1 p.m. yesterday at Sinai Hospital.

"When I came up here, it was already crowded with police," said Eric Edwards, a maintenance worker for the apartment complex who confirmed that windows were broken in two units.

It was the third police-involved shooting of the year, all of which have been fatal, according to Clifford, the police spokesman.

Court records show that Norris had filed multiple domestic-violence suits against Dale Rodney Jones. The court records also show that Norris filed for divorce from a man named Timiko Norris in March 2001 and again in February 2007.

annie.linskey@baltsun.com