Nearly one week after she was stabbed and killed while going for a run in a 'safe' Washington D.C. neighborhood, friends and family in Greenacres are remembering 35-year-old Wendy Martinez as the 'epitome of the American Dream.'
"She was little, but fierce," Cora Martinez, Wendy's mother, told reporters from her home in Wellington, just hours before the memorial service on Tuesday. "She would give her hands to the world."
Martinez was stabbed by a 23-year-old man while jogging in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 18th, according to Metro police. Detectives have not yet released a motive and called the stabbing a random attack.
Wendy Martinez's mother, Cora Martinez, talks about secretly picking out her daughter's wedding dress days after she got engaged. Cora says she never knew that would be the dress for her daughter's burial. https://t.co/FhwH2ISXie@WPTV@WPTVContact5#Contact5pic.twitter.com/Qz0n2czWk3
— Merris Badcock (@MerrisBadcock) September 25, 2018
Just days before she was killed, Martinez got engaged to her longtime boyfriend and bought a wedding dress for her upcoming nuptials.
"She was just an amazing woman. She had all these amazing qualities that sometimes you see in different people, but you had them all in Wendy," her fiancé, Daniel Hincapie said on Tuesday.
This is a developing story. Follow WPTV's Merris Badcock on Twitter for updates.
JUST IN: On the day of his fiancée's memorial service, Daniel Hincapie remembers how he met Wendy Martinez, a Greenacres woman who was stabbed and killed while running in D.C. just days after getting engaged. https://t.co/FhwH2ISXie@WPTV@WPTVContact5#Contact5pic.twitter.com/Au2C56LLu4
— Merris Badcock (@MerrisBadcock) September 25, 2018