| Updated: 3/11 9:56 am |
Published: 3/09 8:33 pm
|
Saturday was a day of mourning in north Tulsa, as Gabby Bledsoe, 18, was laid to rest.
Bledsoe was found stabbed to death in her home last Saturday.
It was standing room only at the funeral for the Rogers High School student, who was an athlete and took college prep classes, with ambitions of becoming a lawyer one day.
After the funeral relatives and close friends told FOX23 News they were relying on their faith in God to get them through this difficult time.
They said as hard as it is to bury a girl with such a promising future, the fact that her killer is still out there only made the funeral tougher on them.
But with a slideshow of pictures of Gabby and songs in her honor, Saturday morning's funeral service was a celebration of the teen's life. Several people wore t-shirts similar to Gabby's high school basketball jersey, complete with her name and her number, three. Others wore purple to the funeral because it was Gabby's favorite color.
There was hardly a dry eye in the building as friends and relatives offered words of support to Gabby's mother.
"Just hold on," one relative said. "It's going to be alright. She went to be with her daddy."
Imagining Gabby with her father in heaven is something that brings comfort for her grandmother.
"He got killed in a car wreck at the age of 16, so young just like her," Teresa Releford said. "It just makes me feel that she always wanted to see him, which she never did know him."
And while there's relief in thinking Gabby is with him now, the rest of her family is still having a hard time getting over the fact she's no longer with them.
"She just left everybody a big pill to swallow," Diann Johnson, another of Gabby's grandmothers, said.
"She's going to be missed dearly, you know. And she was a wonderful child."
"It's finally bringing closure to this situation," Releford said. "I just thank God that it's almost over."
But Gabby's friends and family continue to suffer knowing her killer is still out there.
"We really were hoping that they'd have somebody arrested before this day came today," Roshawn Greer, a close family friend, said.
Greer said the lack of arrest is frustrating.
"You think you know who did it, and you think it would be easy just to say he did it and they'd put him in jail," Greer said. "But we've got to wait for forensics and everything else like that to come out to make sure it's done properly."
And while they continue to wait, they try to fill the emptiness they now feel with the memories she left behind.
"She didn't have a hurtful bone in her body," Greer said. "She was a beautiful woman, a great friend, a great sister. She's going to be missed, but we'll always keep the good with us, the good memories."
