CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A Charleston man's family said they tried to persuade him for years to leave his girlfriend and their turbulent relationship, fearing that one day she would severely injure him.

Police said his girlfriend stabbed him in the chest late last week; he later died in the hospital.

Stacy Marie McCormick, 30, was charged Monday with first-degree murder in the death of her boyfriend, David Snyder, 52.

At about 4 p.m. Thursday, Charleston Police responded to a stabbing call at 1506 Washington Ave. and met with Snyder, who was wounded in the upper portion of his chest, according to a criminal complaint filed in Kanawha County Magistrate Court.

McCormick, when questioned, told police she stabbed her boyfriend during a domestic dispute, the complaint states.

Paramedics took Snyder to CAMC General Hospital, where he was treated; he was released Sunday morning. He returned Sunday evening and died of several blood clots in his lung, said Marsha Snyder, his sister.

Marsha Snyder said McCormick and her brother had been together "on again, off again" for nearly a decade.

McCormick had been arrested and charged with malicious wounding and battery against Snyder in 2007. Snyder also filed an emergency domestic violence petition in October 2011 against McCormick, court records show.

Snyder would complain of McCormick hitting him with blunt objects and she had tried to stab him before, Marsha Snyder said. Their mother questioned how he got a large knot on his head when she visited on his birthday last year.

"He said, 'She took a golf club and hit me, Mommy,'" according to Marsha Snyder.

McCormick has a young daughter, and Marsha Snyder said her brother felt sorry for both mother and child. He would forgive McCormick after every fight because he didn't want the young girl to end up like her mother, she said.

"We kept telling David to get away from her. It was just one big mess of stuff," she said. "He would always come in alone for the family stuff because we wouldn't come around because of her."

She said McCormick stabbed her brother Thursday with a hunting knife and estimated the wound to be about 3 inches deep.

"Doctors say she must have hit an artery," Marsha Snyder said.

Her brother worked nearly 20 years maintaining and repairing rental properties for a Charleston landlord. He was a workaholic and would "go out of his way to help anyone."

He had three children and one grandchild due later this year. His favorite hobbies were playing Dungeons and Dragons and video games with friends, she said.

McCormick had been held since Thursday in South Central Regional Jail on a malicious wounding charge, but was arraigned Monday on the murder charge and is now being held without bail.

This is the third homicide Charleston police detectives have investigated this year and the first to produce an arrest.

In the others, longtime 7-Eleven district manager Robert "Bobby" Kenneth Snow, 55, was killed May 23, police say. His body was found in the Elk River. Police have not determined a cause of death or developed any suspects.

And on Aug. 11, John Alan Rogers Jr., 37, was found lying across railroad tracks at Madison and Wyoming streets, dead of a gunshot wound to the head. Police have talked to a person of interest but have not made any arrests.

Four people were killed in Charleston in 2011. In 2010, there were 11 slayings, two of which remain unsolved.

Reach Travis Crum at travis.c...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5163.