Woman’s Fatal Fall Ends Drama of Family Fights : Van Nuys: She hurtled out of second-story window during an argument. The 35-year-old son she had steadfastly refused to press charges against is arrested.

During the four years that Marjorie Morris shared a Van Nuys apartment with her adult son, neighbors grew to expect the loud arguments between the pair that so often seemed to end in violence and a visit by authorities.

But time and again, after police arrived at her second-story apartment, Morris, 61, refused to press charges against her 35-year-old son, William, according to neighbors. Several of them said they became so frustrated by her failure to act that they stopped calling the police.

“I talked to her several times and said, ‘You’ve got to move before he does something,’ but she wouldn’t,” said Carlotta Knox, who lives in the unit below Morris. “And she was afraid of what he’d do to her if she pressed charges.”

On Saturday, Morris and her son had their final argument, which ended abruptly when, in the late-afternoon sunlight and within earshot of neighbors, she fell out of their dining room window to her death two stories below.

Officials at Valley Hospital Medical Center pronounced her dead from head injuries at 6:40 p.m., less than an hour after the fall.

William Morris was arrested on suspicion of murder and was being held without bail at Van Nuys Jail on Sunday, Los Angeles Police Detective Steven Hooks said.

Neighbors at the apartment complex in the 15100 block of Saticoy Street said they were shocked but not surprised by the incident. Several of them said they had heard arguing in the Morris apartment throughout the day, but none of them had called the police.

After the death, “I said to myself, ‘He really did it’ ” this time, said Knox, 30, shaking her head as she recalled the tragedy on Sunday morning.

Knox and other neighbors said the mother and son quarreled incessantly at all hours of the day and night, sometimes over money, which they said Marjorie Morris refused to give her son because she told them she feared he would use it to buy drugs and alcohol. During their arguments, William Morris, who left his job as a driver at Burbank Studios several months ago, beat his mother and routinely threatened to push her out the window, several neighbors said.

Residents summoned authorities at least once a month--often at Marjorie Morris’ request, apartment manager Tomas Alecia said. But Morris steadfastly refused to press charges once police arrived, leading some residents to become inured to her cries for help.

“It’s like the little boy who cried wolf,” said Alecia’s wife, Debbie.

Added Knox: “It got to the point where she yelled ‘help’ so much you just ignored it.”

Police detectives on Sunday were unavailable to confirm the neighbors’ accounts of previous fights between the two. But a police report of the incident said that on Saturday the pair argued most of the day.

Knox said she, her husband and their 2-year-old son, Ian, had just sat down to dinner when Marjorie Morris suddenly hurtled past their window, striking and shattering it with her feet before landing prone on a dirt strip, her purse and the fragments of a broken cup strewn about her.

Police and ambulances arrived minutes later.

Knox’s husband, Richard, 47, said he raced to the apartment upstairs in search of the injured woman’s son just in time to see the man run instead into a neighbor’s apartment, pausing only long enough to turn and shout, “She tripped and fell through the window.’ ”

Witnesses said Morris made no effort to help his mother.

According to Patricia Agee, 18, Morris barged into her apartment and told her that his mother had “jumped out the window, and that he was sorry, but he wasn’t going to jail,” Agee said. “He said, ‘You have to show me how to get out. Help me get away.’ ”

Moments later, police arrested Morris inside Agee’s apartment without incident.

Detectives remained until late Saturday evening to investigate, sealing off the one-bedroom apartment where William Morris lived alone for more than 10 years until the arrival of his parents about four years ago, according to neighbors. They said Morris’ father moved to the Big Bear area sometime last year.

On Sunday afternoon, neighbors remembered Marjorie Morris as a mother who never stopped caring.

“Her only crime was loving her son and wanting to help him get better,” Carlotta Knox said as she gazed at the stark, white X that marked where her neighbor fell to her death. “She didn’t deserve to die like that.”

Times staff writer David Colker contributed to this story.