WASHINGTON -- "She was the best one of us."
Friends remember Wendy Karina Martinez as brilliant, beautiful and funny.
Martinez was engaged last week. She was excited about a job that challenged her, but rewarded her.
The joyful 35-year-old woman loved Washington, DC.
Martinez was out for a jog on Tuesday night around 8 p.m. in the Logan Circle neighborhood. It was a neighborhood she felt safe in, one that she had run in before. She used to run miles across the District.
She was just two blocks from her home at 11th and P streets when she was attacked by a man with a knife. He stabbed her, and the wound was so serious, she lost her life.
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During a press conference on Thursday, some of Martinez's friends gathered together and shared some things about the young woman's life and spirit.
"Wendy lived two blocks from (11th and P). She felt safe," her friend of six years, Kristina Moore said. "This was her home and she loved it."
PHOTOS: Avid runner fatally stabbed while jogging near her home in Logan Circle
She "was not only beautiful and not only brilliant and a hard worker, and just determined to live out the American dream. She was joyful, and funny, and always there," Moore elaborated.
Martinez's family said she was excited to be planning her upcoming wedding to her fiance Daniel Hincapie. She had just talked to her fiance about an hour before her death.
"This is an outraged community, she should be going to work right now," Mayor Bowser expressed.
The "devout Christian" had been working for FiscalNote, Inc. as the technology company's chief of staff. In a tweet, the company stated that "Wendy was an invaluable member of the team and a vibrant member of the community."
"There is a hole in our hearts that will never be replaced," Moore added.
Family, friends and other community members gathered together at 7 p.m. Thursday at Logan Circle to remember Martinez.
A GoFundMe page has been set up in Martinez's memory.
