DANVILLE, Ky. — Hundreds of mourners packed a Kentucky church yesterday to mourn a “small-town girl’’ who came to New York with big dreams, only to be murdered — allegedly by her lawyer boyfriend in Queens.
Some 800 friends and family members wept as they filed into Centenary Methodist Church and surrounded the closed casket holding Weight Watchers executive Danielle Thomas.
“She’s the kind of girl that makes your whole community proud,” her high-school band director recalled of his one-time star alto saxophone player.
“She was a small-town girl with big-world dreams.”
Her distraught mom, Jamie Thomas Bright, sat next to her only child’s casket and shook hands with mourners, accompanied by her own mother, Juanita Hardgrove.
“Ms. Jamie will never recover. She will go on, but she will never be the same,’’ said Karen Pennington, her friend.
Thomas, 27, died of strangulation and blunt-force trauma on June 24 when Jason Bohn, 33 — who friends say often beat her — attacked her, according to police. He later claimed it was a drunken accident.