Funeral held for 1 of 3 Columbia University students killed in Honduras bus crash

UPPER EAST SIDE, Manhattan (WABC) -- There was a tearful goodbye Friday to one of the three Columbia University students killed in a bus crash in Honduras.

A funeral was held for 21-year-old Daniella Moffson, who was killed along with two other people while spending their winter break volunteering.

People crowded through the door at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun until the synagogue couldn't hold any more.

Mourners spilled onto the sidewalk and into the street where they listened on speakers.

There was no shortage of love for Moffson, a Barnard Junior who wanted to become a pediatrician and spent so much of her short life giving of herself.

"She was selfless, she was constantly helping wherever she went," said Ari Hering, a family friend.

It all ended abruptly in Honduras on Wednesday, when Moffson and two other Columbia University students were killed after their bus tumbled down a ravine.

Moffson and nearly 30 others were on a trip sponsored by a group called Global Brigades.

Their mission was ironically to save lives.

At her funeral on East 85th Street Friday, mourners heard her father's heartbreak as he described how he told Daniella that the Honduras trip sounded like too much.

"He said, 'Why don't you just spend the month, relaxing? How often in life do you get a month off?' And she insisted on going to Honduras to help people she didn't know," said Adena Berkowitz, a mourner.

"What's remarkable is that she was killed on her way back from doing a good deed, the deed was completed," Hering said.

Moffson's friends called her a "world changer", volunteering all over, long before she was even in college when she attended the Ramaz School up the block.

"I think she was already working with AIDS patients when she was in 9th grade, so I think she always wanted to do this kind of work," a mourner said.

In her tightly knit Orthodox community in Manhattan, Daniella's death is a communal tragedy.

Their grief is only the first step, they say, in their journey to live by Daniella's example in the future.