Family, friends and supporters gathered in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Tuesday to say goodbye to Miriam Carey, a Stamford, Conn., woman who was shot and killed outside the U.S. Capitol after a police chase in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 3.
“The service was absolutely beautiful,” said Gail Johnson, a friend of one Carey’s sisters.
Johnson, 50, of Brooklyn, said that Carey’s death is an awful loss, but that she can see the strength in the family left behind. The love shown by Carey’s two sisters was “magical,” she said.
“She had a great heart,” Johnson said.
The funeral service was held at Grace Funeral Chapel in Brooklyn, N.Y. Carey was born in August 1979 and grew up in the East New York section of Brooklyn. She lived most of her adult life in Brooklyn and became a registered dental hygienist in 2002 after receiving a bachelor’s degree in health sciences.
What precipitated the chase through the nation’s capital is still unclear.
The Metropolitan Police Department report said that Carey was driving “erratically” and was shot while inside her car after refusing to stop for officers on Maryland Avenue near the U.S. Capitol building. Her young daughter, who was in the car with her, was not injured.
Her family’s attorney, Eric Sanders, called Carey an innocent victim and said the police report contradicts much of what was originally reported in the days following Carey’s death, including reports that she had rammed security gates and hit an officer.
“She didn’t run anybody over and she certainly didn’t crash into no gate,” Sanders said in an interview Friday.
At the funeral on Tuesday, friends focused on Carey instead of the circumstances surrounding her death.
Randy Ryan, a friend of Carey’s sister Amy Carey-Jones, said the service was a sad and somber occasion, but also a celebration of Carey’s life.
Geoffrey Davis, a friend of Carey’s sister Valarie, said that from everything said on Tuesday by Carey’s family, friends and colleagues, she was a wonderful person, very professional and educated.
The theory that she had mental health issues, he said, is just not the case.
Carey, according to law enforcement sources, had developed an obsession with the White House. In interviews following Carey’s death, her sisters denied claims that she was bipolar or schizophrenic. Carey had battled postpartum depression with psychosis, but had been tapering off her medication under a doctor’s supervision, said Amy Carey-Jones.
