ATTLEBORO — “Get out of the car or I’ll stab you.”

The 49-year-old woman, standing on the dark suburban street, held a 13½-inch carving knife with a beige handle.

State police Maj. Steven O’Donnell, left, with Pawtucket Police Chief George Kelly III, and the alleged weapon.

The Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

The two teenage boys who had stopped their car at her urging, obeyed and stepped out.

It was about 12:50 a.m. yesterday. The woman drove off, leaving her neighborhood behind.

She sped south down Route 95 at 90 mph with officers from at least two police departments giving chase — and twice shooting at her as she allegedly tried to run them over.

At 2:19 a.m. Bridget DeGrafft, of 554 Oak Hill Ave., was pronounced dead at Rhode Island Hospital. The fatal gunshot came from a Pawtucket police officer who investigators say feared that DeGrafft was about to pin him against his cruiser with the stolen car as she kept trying to escape.

State police said they had little motive for what they called the totally random carjacking that ended in Warwick, about 15 miles south of where it began.

“Alcohol and narcotics may have had something to do with her behavior,” however, said state police Maj. Steven O’Donnell last evening.

Earlier, at an afternoon news conference at state police headquarters in Scituate, O’Donnell said: “Who knows what possesses people to do what they did. We’re pleased that none of our officers were hurt.”

Investigators released few details saying the incident remained under investigation.

It began at the hushed junction of Oak Hill Avenue and Locust Street, about three miles east of downtown Attleboro where the police say DeGrafft lived. The junction is marked by lush trees and a new housing development that cuts into an old farm field.

At about 12:50 a.m., the Attleboro police received a 9-1-1 call from a young man in the intersection who reported that a woman had flagged him down on the side of the road and then stole his black Honda at knifepoint. Investigators said DeGrafft likely had taken the knife from her house.

Attleboro police broadcast an alert to other departments asking them to look for the carjacked Honda.

About 20 minutes later, at 1:10 a.m., neighboring Pawtucket police radioed that they were in pursuit of the car on Route 95 near the Lonsdale Avenue exit, heading south at speeds reaching 90 mph.

Rhode Island state troopers took up the chase as well as it entered Providence and the Honda ventured onto Route 10 southbound.

As the Honda attempted to exit at Reservoir Avenue, it struck the rear of a state police cruiser and veered off into a grass median and then crossed the ramp from Reservoir Avenue to Route 10.

The woman, O’Donnell said, tried to drive the car up a steep embankment but the grade was too steep.

That’s when she placed the car into reverse “at a high rate of speed and traveled down the embankment at numerous officers on foot trying to apprehend” her.

The officers took cover. One trooper fell to the ground. As he started to get up, said O’Donnell, the woman “put the vehicle in drive and drove at the state trooper.” The trooper fired one shot at her.

O’Donnell said as the woman swerved back onto the roadway, she tried to hit a Pawtucket police officer who in return also “fired several rounds.”

O’Donnell wouldn’t say exactly how many shots were fired.

The Honda then traveled southbound on Route 10 and merged onto Route 95 south, speeding as it went. It encountered several other cruisers from the state police and Pawtucket. One trooper managed to get in front of the Honda and it swerved to take the Jefferson Boulevard exit, where the woman lost control.

The car spun around and got snagged on a Jersey barrier separating the two-way traffic on the ramp. Two Pawtucket cruisers and one state police cruiser were then able to box the Honda in.

But O’Donnell said the driver still wasn’t done.

“The vehicle then jerked violently back and forth continuing to try to get away. A member of the Pawtucket Police Department got wedged between his cruiser and the [carjacked Honda] and fearing for his safety fired one more round, we believe one round, at the suspect.”

O’Donnell said investigators were still trying to piece together what happened; no police officers have been suspended pending an investigation.

Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch said his office, as is usual protocol in such cases, will investigate whether the police officers’ use of force was justified.

Back in Attleboro last night, neighbors describe a woman on a long, downward slope. They weren’t surprised that DeGrafft’s story came to a bad end, only at the extraordinary intensity of it.

DeGrafft was close to none of them, the separation partly because of what they described as her persistent heavy drinking punctuated by visits by the police and rescue vehicles.

They said she had a husband and a son, who played with children in the neighborhood. But that changed perhaps four or five years ago: Her husband left, taking their son with him.

“She would talk about how she was sad because she hadn’t seen her son in so long,” said Linda Rocha, who lives around the corner on Locust Street.

The house also went downhill, said Linda Hasslehurst, another neighbor who walks her golden retriever/Irish setter by the house regularly. “The lawn was as high as the fence,” she said, and the house looked equally sad.

Things changed again beginning perhaps two months ago, Rocha said, when DeGrafft’s father-in-law, who owned the house, returned and began a dramatic cleanup.

The house is now painted, with new siding, the yard trimmed, looking like new and fitting in again with the tidy neighborhood.

“He must have asked her to leave,” Rocha said.

Journal staff writer Bruce Landis contributed to this report

tmooney@projo.com