Mourners Gather for 1st Nashville School Shooting Funeral

Family and friends of Evelyn Dieckhaus, one of three children who were killed in a school shooting in Nashville this week, remembered her Friday as a “shining light” and said farewell to a girl who loved art, music, animals and snuggling with her older sister on the couch.

The funeral at the Woodmont Christian Church in Nashville’s Green Hills neighborhood was closed to the media. Before the service, the church's senior minister, the Rev. Clay Stauffer, echoed what Evelyn's family has shared about her.

“She was a shining light. She was radiant,” Stauffer told The Associated Press. “I think our challenge is to take her light and keep spreading it to a world that has so much darkness and pain.”