The anguished widow of New Jersey mall-murder victim Dustin Friedland delivered a eulogy Wednesday for her “dream man,” sharing with mourners the joy of their short life together.
Standing just feet from his casket, Jamie Schare Friedland told hundreds gathered at a synagogue that despite her loss, “I’m truly the luckiest person I know, and I still believe that because I married the best man in the entire world.
“I was lucky enough to be with him in the time we had, and it’s forever,” said Jamie, 27.
“There was not a better person, a better soul, in the entire world. He was my entire world and my happiness was the most important thing to him, always.”
Dustin, 30, was shot once in the head Sunday night while trying to protect Jamie from two thugs who stole their 2012 Range Rover as they prepared to drive home to Hoboken after a shopping trip to The Mall at Short Hills.
“He was kind, generous, giving, smart, loving, loyal — just the best person you ever met, which all of you obviously know,” she said.
Later, Jamie said: “He was my perfect person, my everything.”
The mourners seemed to brace themselves for her heartbreaking words, letting out a collective sigh of grief as Jamie took the podium as the last of six speakers at Temple Beth Am Shalom in Lakewood.
She earlier stood outside sobbing and hugging mourners as they arrived — but when it was time for the service to start, she tearfully said: “I can’t go in there. I can’t go in there.”
A woman hugged her and said gently, “One step. One step,” as she escorted her inside.
Dressed in all black, Jamie spoke for nearly 10 minutes, during which her voice broke and she had to stop and compose herself several times.
Jamie never mentioned the brutal crime but called Dustin “the most chivalrous person. He would run to make sure he opened the car door for me. There wasn’t a bag anyone ever carried that Dustin didn’t help with,” she said.
“Dustin always did the right thing. Always.”
Jamie recalled meeting Dustin while they were law students at Syracuse University and how they started dating just a month before he graduated.
For the next two years, she said, they had a long-distance relationship while she finished her studies.
“He would drive in a snowstorm, at 10 p.m., every other weekend to visit me at Syracuse, to show that we didn’t go too long without seeing each other,” she said.
“There was nothing that was going to stop him from seeing me, ever.”
Jamie also called her slain husband, who worked for his father’s Epic Mechanical air-conditioning company, “the funniest person ever,” who “had the quickest wit and always had a good one-liner.”
“We were talking about a friend the other day and how she likes the funny guy, and I told him I always like the smart guy,” she said.
“But with him, I was lucky enough to get the funny guy, along with the smart guy.”
Jamie even laughed a little while recalling some of his quirks, including how he would tell a story and get “fixated” on some “really, really random and minor irrelevant detail.”
“He would keep retelling the same story, or he’d be sitting by himself and all of a sudden he’d start laughing,” she said.
“I’d ask: ‘What’s going on, Dustin?’ And he’d say: ‘Oh, something that happened a few months ago.’ ”
She also recalled how “Dustin loved his food” and could “sit for hours and eat a meal that would fill 12 people.”
She described their nuptials, two years ago, as “a dream wedding” at which she “married my dream man.”
“After the ceremony, the rabbi told everyone that he’s never met a couple so excited to marry each other,” she added. “It was true.”
Jamie also called Dustin “the most religious and spiritual person.”
“He prayed every night before he went to sleep and prayed before every meal,” she said.
“In typical Dustin fashion, when I asked what he was praying about, he told me he was praying for me, his family and his friends.”
Near the end of the eulogy, she nearly broke down, weeping as she struggled to describe how Dustin’s “neshama” — the Hebrew word for soul or spirit — had “fulfilled its purpose, and now he can move on.”
“Justin, I love you more than anything in the entire multiverse,” she said through tears. “You are my everything, my hero. And I’m so proud to have known you, loved you and married you.”
During the other eulogies, sister Deanna Friedland spoke at length about Dustin’s incredible love for Jamie, saying, “It was so clear how overwhelmed with happiness he was because he had found the great love of his life.”
Childhood best friend Joseph Cermatori called Dustin “the gentlest, kindest, most decent, most peaceful person.”
“You never knew violence or injustice until the end, and no one deserved less than to meet it so directly, and so terribly, as you did,” he added.
Mother-in-law Agnes Schare managed to draw laughter from the mourners when she recalled a cousin saying of Dustin: “I wish we could just clone him for all the girls.”
“We have a lot of girls in my family. And Dustin would always say to me: ‘Tell me again what Carol said. Tell me again,’ ” she said.
A law-enforcement source said cops had yet to identify the two men sought in Dustin’s slaying, who are believed to be black men in their 20s.
Surveillance video from cameras in the Millburn mall’s parking garage was shot from angles that don’t provide a good view of their faces, the source said. Cops are awaiting the results of DNA and hair-fiber testing of evidence from the Range Rover, which was found abandoned in Newark on Monday.
Authorities also hope that a total of $41,000 in reward money will bring in tips from the public.
“What the detectives are hoping for is the perps to brag about what they did,” the source said.
“There is no honor on the street, especially when money is involved. All you need is one good tip and these guys are done.”
Additional reporting by Jamie Schram