A stunning tale of survival told by a city prostitute has led to the arrest of a man on charges of attempted murder.
Mary Norris, the daughter of a decorated Baltimore police officer and a prostitute for 13 years, said her harrowing escape from a john who tried to strangle her in the basement of her South Baltimore home was similar to a string of slayings of other prostitutes expect for one simple fact: She escaped.
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“I’m one of the lucky ones: I’m alive,” Norris said she walks South Monroe Street, a known area for prostitution. “I was able to get away. Some of the other women down here weren’t so lucky.”
Five women with recent arrests for prostitution have been strangled in the city since April. A special homicide task force convened to investigate the string of slayings has yet to make any arrests.
But police charged Shannon Yearby, 30, of the 7800 block of Tall Pines Court in Glen Burnie, on Oct. 2 with the attempted murder and sexual assault of Norris. Yet even with her alleged assailant in jail, Norris said the assault continues to haunt her, along with the suffering of other women who died.
“I have a lot of sleepless nights now, and it’s not getting better, but it could be worse,” she said. “I think of the other women too. All of the prostitutes have to stick together; no one else cares about us.”
As Norris recalls, her violent encounter started out as an average “date” on the night of Aug. 17.
“He picked me up down the street, and I took him back to my house. He was very nice at first.”
But after consummating the “trick” in her basement, Norris said the man suddenly became enraged.
“He jumped on me and started strangling me. I was screaming but no one could hear me.”
After struggling with her 6-foot attacker, she managed to knee him in the groin, freeing herself from his grip and making a break for it.
“I just ran through the door screaming. My husband jumped up and attacked him with a machete,” she said.
After struggling with Norris’ husband, the assailant escaped. But police surveillance cameras caught him running down the street, blood gushing from a wound to his ear inflicted by the machete. Norris was left with large welts on her neck and the psychological trauma of a near deadly encounter.
“I had a really bad ligature on my neck. I was almost dead.”
After the incident, Norris ran into a police officer she knew. Armed with the used condom she saved, police were able to match his DNA from another assault.
“I had to do something,” she said.
Now as Norris awaits Yearby’s trial, she has been forced to rethink an occupation born out of a heroin addiction that led the Chesapeake High School graduate and former college student away from her true love: forensic science.
“Nobody forced me to do this, it was my own choice,” she said of her profession. “But there are a lot of violent guys and strange people you meet.
“One guy just wanted me to play dead; he got all his gratification from lifting up my limp arm,” she said. “I said, ‘Man, have you ever tried the morgue?’ ”
