Funeral Held For Franco Garcia At Boston College
BOSTON (AP) — From a choir loft above mourners, the sound of students' brass horns spread through a church on the campus of Boston College in a tribute to their school band mate.
Their notes climbed, and then suddenly fell, betraying sniffles from the crowd inside Saint Ignatius of Loyola Church on Wednesday.
They were honoring the life of Franco Garcia, whose Feb. 22 disappearance sparked a massive search that ended when his body surfaced last week in the Chestnut Hill Reservoir.
Authorities said preliminary autopsy results suggested the 21-year-old chemistry major may have died after an accidental fall into the water.
Friends last saw Garcia, a junior at the college, while drinking at a bar near campus after a band practice.
"Franco's disappearance brought to the surface how much love you had for him and still have for him today," the Rev. Michael Nolan told churchgoers in a service that included prayers in English and Spanish.
Senior Katherine Corteselli eulogized her best friend as someone with a beautiful smile, a passion for music and an uncommon devotion to family and friends.
She said they met during their first day at Boston College, when she mistook Garcia as someone older and more confident than a freshman when she went to pick up her band uniform.
"He was one of those people who once you met him, you felt like you knew him forever," Corteselli said.
She was among college friends who got separated from Garcia the night he went missing. They couldn't find him at bar closing time.
The next day, his parents Luzmila and Jose Garcia returned in a panic from a New York City vacation. Their son never again showed up for classes, never returned to his family's West Newton home, and never went back to his full-time pharmacy technician job.
Police divers searched the water of the reservoir several times. Authorities also used a helicopter and police dogs to comb the campus neighborhood.
Garcia's parents stopped working for weeks as loved ones came together to search and pray for Garcia, including an aunt who flew in from his parents' homeland of Peru.
Police recovered images from a bank ATM of Garcia walking in the area near the bar. But there were no more clues until his body floated to the top of the weed-filled reservoir on April 11.
Luzmila Garcia said after following her son's chrome-colored casket from the church Wednesday that she still has questions about how he died.
"We want to know the truth," she told The Associated Press.
Authorities are awaiting toxicology test results that could reveal more and have said the investigation into Garcia's final hours is ongoing.
Nolan called upon mourners to pray for anyone who might know something about what happened to Garcia that night.
But the priest also told churchgoers that the student had "gone to the Lord."
"We no longer look for him in this life," he said.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
