Inside a crowded church, sitting next to her caring mother, Talia Kenan still appeared alone and lost in her overwhelming grief.
The 18-year-old girl was among the last of the mourners to arrive, walking into the New Jersey church 10 minutes after the funeral Mass began yesterday and sitting off to the side.

She barely lifted her head, crying as loved ones of her slain friend Jennifer Moore remembered the college-bound teen who was raped and killed last week by a drifter she had crossed paths with in Manhattan.

"Jen had a passion for life that was beautiful and simple," family friend Fran Swire said during a heart-wrenching eulogy.

Swire, a nurse who inspired Moore to set out on a path of studying medicine, recalled a sweet girl with a clear message: "Be happy. Make others happy. Never let go of who you are."

Kenan was the last of Moore's loved ones to see her alive.

The slain girl's family said it doesn't blame Kenan for the 18-year-old's death. But sorrow still consumed Kenan as the hundreds inside St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church in Saddle River wept openly and gazed at the closed silver casket.

Kenan and Moore sneaked into Manhattan in Kenan's mother's car late Monday.

Despite being underage, the girls drank heavily at a Chelsea club until 2:30 a.m., police say, when they walked back to where they had parked the car and discovered it had been towed. About an hour later, they took a cab to the NYPD impound lot at Pier 76.

But the tow pound would not give the teens the car, believing they were too intoxicated to drive, and within the hour Kenan passed out. After employees called an ambulance to help her, Moore wandered off.

Lost and drunk, Moore was snatched off the city's streets allegedly by 34-year-old felon Draymond Coleman. She was taken to a dive hotel across the Hudson River in New Jersey, where she was raped and killed.

Much of yesterday's eulogy was a veiled reference to the critical moments early Tuesday when Moore and Kenan were still together at the tow lot.

Friends said they wish Moore would have asked the cops for help rather than leaving alone.

"If just one child gains the strength from Jen to ask for help, she will have made a difference," Swire said outside the church. "If a handful of kids who heard Jen's story remember not to walk away, then she will save thousands."

Moore was the youngest of three children. She used to ride on her big brother Russell's shoulders and walk hand in hand with her older sister, Amy.

In her Harrington Park home, she repeatedly watched "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" with friends and had an endearing love of the children's movie "Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles."

But it was her passion for soccer and near-permanent smile that united her circle of friends from Saddle River Day School and others who knew her.

"It's a horrible thing to happen to somebody," said Moore's neighbor Barbara Mockler, 50. "She definitely didn't do anything to deserve this."