Mourners Gather For Beating Victim

Several hundred mourners gathered Saturday for the funeral of a woman who plunged off a bridge to her death after a man beat her bloody over a traffic accident.

Deletha Word, 33, was dragged from her car and beaten in the Aug. 19 attack on a bridge over the Detroit River as a crowd watched. A witness said that while a few in the crowd cheered the beating, most were horrified but afraid to intervene.

Police have said Word jumped, but the family has questioned that account because she could not swim.

“She fought to the end like a true warrior by going over the bridge,” a friend, Demetrius Daniels, said in a eulogy Saturday at Temple of Faith Baptist Church. “She let the world know she’d rather be free than be enslaved.”

Martell Welch, 19, was charged with second-degree murder in Word’s death. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Sept. 1.