Bombing victim Krystle Campbell mourned in Medford

MEDFORD — At the Oak Grove Cemetery here, under a cloudless blue sky, the Rev. Chip Hines led a burial service for Krystle Campbell, the 29-year-old Medford native murdered during the terrorist bombings at the Boston Marathon.

As with the funeral Mass that Hines officiated at earlier today inside St. Joseph’s Church and as was true at the wake held for Campbell Sunday night, the crowd in the graveyard was expansive, and mourners moved close to surround the family and the casket.

“It was a beautiful outpouring of support for her family,” Hines said afterward. “Medford really came through for her family, Medford and beyond. There were people who didn’t know Krystle and her family, and they just felt they had to be there as Americans, really, and offer condolences.”

At church today, hundreds stood in line for the opportunity to attend funeral services for Campbell. Some had to be turned away from the door of the packed building, while others came expressly to line the street to guard the grieving family from a possible protest by a fringe group.

An honor guard of firefighters and police stood at attention and saluted as pallbearers carried Campbell’s casket past them down High Street late this morning. A solitary bell tolled as her casket was borne into St. Joseph Church.

When a funeral director announced late this morning that the building was filled to capacity, at least 200 people, some carrying flowers, were still in line.

Meanwhile, hundreds more were across the street, among them more than 200 union members, organized by Teamsters Local 25, to form a human shield against a protest that never materialized from the Westboro Baptist Church.

Today’s service comes after about 1,000 mourners attended Campbell’s wake at the Dello Russo funeral home here on Sunday. Campbell was one of three people killed in the terror bombings that struck near the race’s finish line a week ago.

Among the mourners who were unable to get into the church was 21-year-old Julia Dziamba of Newton, who worked with Campbell last summer in the Cambridge and the Boston Harbor Islands locations of Jasper White’s Summer Shack, for which Campbell was a manager.

“You know how everyone says they hate their boss? She was more of a friend to me,” Dziamba said.

Campbell was “the best boss I’ve ever had,” she said. “When she’d come into the room, it wasn’t like, ‘The boss is here.’ It was like my friend was in the room.”

Although they only worked together for one summer, “it felt like I knew her longer,” she said.

“She’s got these big blue eyes that everybody talks about,” Dziamba said. “And she always had a smile on her face. Even if she was mad, she’d smile through it.”

As for the overflow crowd, Dziamba guessed that Campbell “would have loved it. She loved having a lot of people around her.”

The motorcade that included the hearse carrying Campbell was led by 23 officers on motorcycles. A long line of people waited to get into the church.

While the blocking of possible protests was organized by the Teamsters, it drew many people without union ties.

Derek Lofstrom, 33, of Winchester said he learned Sunday night that protesters would possibly be at the funteral through his Facebook feed, and immediately decided he would help block them. He climbed a tree in a yard across from the church to help hang a large American flag Monday.

“I felt it was kind of my civic duty to come out,” he said. “There’s no way in hell I wasn’t going to.”

Also in the crowd were six off-duty Everett firefighters, Tom Quigley, Jim Neary, Michael Columeta, Scott Dalry, Kevin Leary and William Hurley. “It’s a tragedy,” Quigley said. “We wanted to show our support for the family, and make sure everything went OK.”

Sunday’s wake was attended by, among others, US Senator Elizabeth Warren, US Representative Edward Markey, Attorney General Martha Coakley, Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn, and Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone, a funeral director said.

Mourners waited in a line that sometimes lasted nearly an hour and a half to file by photo displays chronicling Campbell’s life from when she was a baby through her childhood and teen years to when she was an adult.

Through all the photos, her smile and freckles were ever-present.

The terror blast on April 15 also wounded more than 170, some of whom lost limbs when the two blasts tore into them, officials said.

Law enforcement officials allege that two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, set off the bombs, murdered MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, and then enaged in a furious firefight with police that left Tamerlan dead and Dzhokhar the subject of a massive manhunt.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured in Watertown Friday night and is currently being treated at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston for wounds sustained during the wave of violence, officials said.

Tsarnaev today was charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against persons and property in the United States resulting in death, the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston said.

The FBI said today that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev remains in serious condition.