Hundreds mourn schoolgirl who drowned at Long Beach

Hundreds of relatives, classmates, friends, faculty and neighbors filled an Inwood funeral home on Friday to remember 12-year-old Nicole Suriel, who drowned during a school field trip to Long Beach this week.

More than 100 schoolmates, most in their uniforms of baby blue tops and navy bottoms, stopped by to pay their respects, many unable to hold back tears as they walked past Nicole's cream open coffin at the R.G. Ortiz Funeral Home.

On Tuesday, Nicole, a sixth-grader at the Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering in Morningside Heights, was pulled unconscious from the water about an hour and a half after she went under while swimming with classmates on a field trip.

The drowning has triggered an investigation by the city Department of Education into public schools' field-trip policies.

Some of the children at the funeral home wore around their neck 3-by-5 photos of a smiling Nicole in a red kayak. Others had on white T-shirts screen printed with Suriel wearing a cream graduation cap and gown. Many made sure to hug Nicole's parents, Juan and Marisol Suriel, in the chapel's front row.

Later, the grieving children, joined by faculty and parents, held a candlelight vigil at a park near Columbia Secondary.

As the sun set, they all huddled in a circle on a hill in Morningside Park.

Some students struggled to hold back tears, others cried openly. A few shared their feelings.

"I don't know how many people would have gotten through this week if we weren't here together," said a sixth-grade girl, whose mother did not want her identified. "I would have collapsed emotionally if my teachers and friends hadn't been there."

Susan Lehman, the parent of another sixth-grader, said, "Really what everybody was here to mourn was this terrific, vibrant and lovely child."