Wisdom Pharaoh was working late Monday night inside her office at the McDougald Terrace housing complex when she heard gunshots outside. As she got up from her desk, her young son ran into the office, breathlessly telling her someone had been shot.

As she went outside, the police had just pulled up and were separating two men grappling on the ground in front of Sima Avenue. Pharaoh soon learned that one of the men, Timothy Lonell Bell, 25, of Durham, had been accused of shooting and killing her best friend and neighbor, Faarah Christine Anderson, 29, and Anderson’s live-in boyfriend, Farrahquan Idre “Squeak” Glenn, 27.

“He looked straight demonic,” Pharaoh said Tuesday. “He looked like he was being overtaken by something.”

Pharaoh, president of McDougald Terrace resident council, and other residents of the public housing community say Anderson’s four school-age children were sleeping in their beds upstairs when Bell charged into her two-story apartment at 1 Sima Ave. and shot her and her boyfriend. Pharaoh said the children’s father is Timothy Bell’s brother, Lance Bell of Durham.

Police charged Timothy Bell with two counts of first-degree murder. They said the shooting was not a random act, but declined to discuss the circumstances that led to it.

Dallas J. Parks, chief executive officer of the Durham Housing Authority, said the shootings were domestic related.

“The police characterized it as a domestic dispute,” Parks said Tuesday afternoon. “I am still trying to ferret out all the details.”

Pharaoh said Anderson had broken up with Lance Bell more than three years ago. Anderson had been in a romantic relationship with Glenn for at least two years, Pharaoh said, but Anderson did not have any problems with the father of her children until she recently graduated from the Center for Employment Training in Durham and began making plans to move to Atlanta with Glenn.

“Squeak and Lance got into a fight about a week ago,” Pharaoh said.

Lance Bell was unavailable for comment Tuesday afternoon. A man who answered the phone at the family home said they were not interested in talking.

Pharaoh said that after the shooting, Timothy Bell dropped the handgun and ran out of the house. He tried to jump a nearby fence but was tackled by Glenn’s brother, who apparently had run out of the apartment during the shooting.

Someone witnessing the fight called 911 and then hung up. When the operator called back the witness said “somebody’s fighting. Somebody’s been killed, or something,” according to a copy of the 911 recording made public Tuesday.

After police got the fight under control, they went into the apartment and found Glenn in the living room and Anderson on the floor near the kitchen, Pharaoh said. Anderson’s four children were still upstairs, asleep, she said.

Pharaoh stood outside the apartment while police went upstairs to get the children, two boys, 10 and 9, and two girls, 7 and 3.

“The police put their hands over their eyes and brought them to my house,” Pharaoh said.

Employees with the Durham Department of Social Services picked up the children Tuesday.

Anderson, who moved to Durham from Newark, N.J., had been living at McDougald Terrace for more than four years. She worked as a cook at a rest home.

Pharaoh, other residents and Howard Coleman, who works as a maintenance man at the apartment complex, said Anderson loved to cook and adored her children, who stood out as particularly well-mannered. She greeted her neighbors with a cherry “Ola Chica!”

“She was the sweetest, most caring mother in the world,” said Coleman. “We all loved her. She was a great tenant. I hope they start a trust fund or something for her children. They didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve it.”