Kirkwood Highway walkway bridge dedicated to fallen officer in Delaware

Family, former co-workers, and legislators took another step in recognizing the late Robert Bell, a Delaware state trooper who died in the line of duty in 1993.

A plaque was unveiled in Dover Thursday. That plaque will be placed on the John T. Davis Bridge that spans Kirkwood Highway in Wilmington.  That’s where an unfortunate chain of events began in 1981 that took Trooper Bell’s life.

Bell was off duty when he came to the assistance of another trooper who was trying to prevent a man from jumping off the bridge. Corporal Bell received injuries that required surgery. He was treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital where he received HIV tainted blood during the procedure.

He didn’t know he was infected in 1985 when he was trying to donate blood. He died from complications of AIDS on September 6, 1993.

Corporal Bell is among those honored in the garden of Delaware’s fallen police officers. His good friend and former classmate Kevin McDerby, now police chief of Old New Castle, was among those who remembered the selflessness of Robert Bell.