Virginia Beach, Va. ? An explosion rang out and a woman on a bench slumped over, blood pouring from her head, a witness testified Tuesday in the trial of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad. And an officer testified that a horrified colleague informed her the shooting was “the third one this morning.”

Just moments before Sarah Ramos was shot Oct. 3, 2002, Ralph Sheldon testified, he had seen a “pretty lady sitting there” on the bench at a shopping center in Silver Spring, Md.

After the shooting, Sheldon went into a nearby restaurant and called 911.

“A girl just shot herself,” Sheldon could be heard telling the dispatcher on the tape of the call, which prosecutors played for the jury.

Under questioning by prosecutors, Sheldon explained that he had thought it was a suicide because Ramos, 34, had been sitting alone.

But Cynthia Martin, the first police officer to arrive on the scene, testified that she immediately discerned the wound was not self-inflicted because there was no weapon nearby.

Martin also knew there was no way the woman could survive. A medical examiner later testified that the bullet had shredded Ramos’ brain.

Martin told jurors that another police officer who arrived shortly after was very upset and told her, “Don’t you know this was the third one this morning?”

Ramos’ husband, Carlos Cruz, testified earlier Tuesday that he last saw his wife of 10 years at 6:30 a.m. as she was getting ready to go to her job cleaning houses. He said he learned of her death less than three hours later.

Defense attorney Peter Greenspun uses a diagram displayed on a screen during the murder trial of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad at the Virginia Beach Circuit Court in Virginia Beach, Va. During Tuesday's testimonies, Greenspun argued against the prosecution's use of witness 911 calls as evidence.

“She was a very religious lady,” Cruz said through an interpreter. “She had good morals.”

Ramos was one of five people to die in Montgomery County, Md., within a 16-hour period Oct. 2-3, 2002. In all, 10 people were slain in the shooting spree that terrorized the Washington area for three weeks.

Muhammad, 42, is on trial for only one of the 10 killings, the Oct. 9, 2002, shooting of Dean Harold Meyers at a gasoline station in Manassas. But prosecutors are presenting evidence from other shootings before and during the Washington-area spree.

Prosecutors must prove multiple killings to get a conviction on death-penalty charges against Muhammad. Malvo, 18, goes on trial next month in the slaying of an FBI analyst.

The court session began Tuesday with defense attorney Peter Greenspun objecting to prosecutors’ plans to play tapes of 911 calls from various shootings, saying they don’t tell the jury anything about who may have committed the crimes.

“All it is adding is emotion in many instances to the case,” Greenspun said.

Prosecutor Paul Ebert countered that defense lawyers were “trying to sanitize the evidence.”

Circuit Judge LeRoy Millette Jr. said he would permit the tapes because they were relevant to the prosecution’s case.

Montgomery County, Md., YMCA employee Nathaniel Steven Kane demonstrates how he saw sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad on Oct. 22, 2002, at the Montgomery YMCA. Kane testified Monday at Muhammad's trial.