http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/current/news/stories/bridgedeath.html (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
DETROIT (Reuter) - A 19-year-old man has been ordered to stand trial for the murder of a woman who was stripped nearly naked and beaten before she jumped from a bridge to her death two weeks ago.
Martell Welch was bound over for trial Friday by District Judge Chris Stith on the charge of open murder for the death of Deletha Word on Aug. 19.
Prosecutors, who originally charged Welch with second-degree murder, said they modified the charge because of increasingly disturbing evidence in the case.
``This gives the jury or the ultimate fact-finder, if it's a judge, the opportunity to find that Mr. Welch premeditated this killing, that it was deliberate,'' said Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Kevin Simowski.
Witnesses described a brutal, frightening scene that ended with Word, 33, drowning in the Detroit River as a crowd of 40 to 50 people watched and failed to intervene.
One witness to the bridge tragedy, Tiffany Alexander, said she was a passenger in a car with a cellular telephone, but no one used it to call police.
The incident recalled the 1964 stabbing of Kitty Genovese, in which her New York neighbors ignored her cries for help.
Witnesses said Welch, 19, flew into a rage after he and Word were involved in a car accident on Belle Isle, an island park and popular cruising spot among the city's youth.
Harvey Mayberry said he saw Welch kick Word, punch her repeatedly and slam her head into her car several times. Welch then picked her up, threw her onto a concrete sidewalk and threatened to beat her with a car jack, he said.
``He kept asking her, 'Why'd you hit my car? Why'd you hit my car?''' Mayberry testified.
He said Welch, who is more than 6 feet (two metres) tall, picked up the nearly naked Word and offered to sell her for sex to the crowd.
``He said, 'Anybody want some of this bitch? She has to pay for my car,''' Mayberry said.
``She was nude until the point where she only had on G-string panties.''
Witnesses said Word was silent throughout the ordeal, which lasted about 20 minutes. She was described as a petite woman, 4 feet 11 inches tall and 115 pounds.