Killing of Nurse Prompts Program on Domestic Abuse
By Chris Rowett

Delores Winborne graduated from the School of Nursing on May
26. Less than three months later, she was dead.
    Winborne, 36, was found stabbed to death in her Owings
Mills apartment by police responding to a 911 call on Aug.
17. State prosecutor Dean Stocksdale said Winborne's husband
of eight years, Steven Lewis Winborne, 38, confessed and was
charged with first-degree murder. He will stand trial in
January.
    Delores Winborne had a master's degree in public
administration from the University of Maryland Baltimore
County, and had just achieved her goal of becoming a nurse.
    As a student, she excelled. Community nursing instructor
Kathy Becker remembers the victim as an articulate and
intelligent student. The two worked together at Health Care
for the Homeless, a primarily male shelter in downtown
Baltimore.
    "She was exceptional in her ability and ease in working
with the clients there," Becker said. "She was able to
maintain a very professional attitude."
    Fellow nursing student Barbara Russell said Winborne
coped well with the everyday struggles of school and the
death in July of her 16-year-old nephew, whom Winborne had
taken in after her sister's death.
    "She was a motivator for a lot of students," Russell
said. "When people were down in the dumps, she would give
them a good pep talk and bring them back to where they needed
to be."
    Steven Winborne was an unemployed maintenance worker at
the time of the killing. Sgt. Steve Doarnberger of the
Baltimore County Police Department said Winborne had been
formally charged with battery three times in the past five
years.
    "He was very possessive," Russell recalled. "She often
had to study elsewhere to get away from the hostility."
    In Delores Winborne's memory, the School of Nursing will
sponsor a lecture titled "Recognizing and Helping with
Domestic Violence When It's Close to Home" on Monday, Oct.
24. Professor Jacquelyn Campbell, who wrote Nursing Care of
Survivors of Family Violence (co-authored by Janice
Humphreys), will speak.
    "It's one of the most tragic things I've ever
experienced," Becker said. "When you work with clients,
somehow you protect yourself a bit. But when it's someone you
knew, mentored and cared about, it's a different story."
    Russell recommended that students who are victims of
domestic abuse seek immediate counseling, and if that does
not help, leave the situation before graduating.
    "Oftentimes, when you obtain independence, people become
threatened," she said. "They've lost control of whatever they
thought they had control of."
    The memorial lecture will be held in the Mountcastle
Auditorium of the Preclinical Teaching Building at Wolfe and
Monument streets. For information, call 955-7544.