Tuesday, 26 Nov 2024

London Bridge terror attack: Tributes paid to victims in emotional service

On Friday, Mias Jones’s mother Michelle Jones, her grandmother, and other family members attended a memorial service, having attended a private funeral earlier in the day.

The service, led by Rev Patrick Taylor, was held at Holy Trinity Church, where playwright William Shakespeare is buried.

Rev Taylor urged those attending to “keep on telling her story”.

He praised Miss Jones as “somebody who rolled up her sleeves and did something about it”.

Speaking after the attack, her loved ones had paid tribute to a “brilliant, caring daughter”, who had applied to become a police officer.

They said they had been left “devastated” by her death in the London Bridge attack, where she had been among those attending a prisoner rehabilitation event.

Mourners began arriving at the church just after 11am, with about 500 arriving to hear and give thanks for the “inspiration” of Ms Jones’ example.

Reading the tribute, Rev Michael Price, the deputy headmaster of Bloxham School where she had studied, said Miss Jones’ was a “life-shaper”, a woman of “courage” and “never forgotten”.

“She made me laugh – she could be funny, she could be very funny,” he said, to laughter from those at the service.

He said she was “full of talents – full of strength”.

Rev Mr Price added: “She was, at school, a hockey goalkeeper, and the sort of character you’ve got to be for that was Saskia, wasn’t it? None shall pass.

“She had to be the best she could possibly be.

“She wanted to learn how to be the best.

“That was typical of Saskia.”

“She led in sport, she led in life, she led in school, she was a champion public speaker, she was an essential leader of our choir – she had a beautiful, beautiful voice.

“She just led, really.”

He said a book of condolence at the school had been filled with memories of Ms Jones, adding “Saskia was a life-shaper, and they will never forget her. Never”.

Rev Mr Price said she had graduated with a first from Cambridge, and got 100 percent for her dissertation.

“If I have single narrative to tell, it is of a young woman who took time to know the talents and the strengths the rest of us could always see,” he added.

“A young woman who through sheer determination and hard work put her talents to good.

“She then used it on behalf of everyone else, that’s what she did. I watched it up close.”

He told how she had given her time generously, working for an eating disorder group, a rape crisis centre, carrying out prison visits and also with the Living Together group in Cambridge.

“She was going to do extraordinary things,” said Rev Price.

“The police were going to be so blessed by having a girl with all her talents.

“Saskia understood both the rule of law and the law of love, and she’d got them both, and knew that both were essential.”

He added: “She had the courage to challenge what was wrong, and to challenge people to change and she did that.”

Rev Mr Price said: “We cannot help but feel robbed.

“Robbed of all that potential, robed of that potential leadership, but we’ve got to remember we’re not robbed of her inspiration.

“We’re robbed of her presence but we’re not robbed of that power to do good, that she wrought.

“We’re robbed of her life, but not of that light within her that shone and can go on shining.”

He recalled the address she gave at the end of school: “Remember what lies behind and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

“It’s up to us to make sure that Saskia’s light burns on, brightly, in this world.

“I am quite sure she will be shining forever in the next.”

There were readings by both Miss Jones’s uncle, Phil Jones – who read Psalm 121, and her mother, who recited Nicole Lyons’s I Hope That Someday When I Am Gone.

“I hope that someday when I am gone, someone, somewhere, picks my soul up off of these pages and thinks, I would have loved her,” she said.

She added: “Thank you all for your love, thank you all for your support.”

Afterwards, mourners heard a powerful performance of I Dreamed A Dream, from the musical, Les Miserables, performed by soloist Jessica Clarke.

The service concluded with the playing of the James Blunt track, The Greatest.

The family requested donations for Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance.

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