Thou­sands of mourn­ers gath­ered at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day for the fu­ner­al of Chris­t­ian and Tere­sa Adam, the cou­ple killed in a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent on the Claude Noel High­way near the Botan­i­cal Gar­dens two weeks ago

Cr­wods be­gan gath­er­ing at the venue from as ear­ly as 7.30 am, well ahead of the sched­uled time for view­ing at 9 am. As the hears­es ar­rived, sobs and screams could be heard from some in the crowd.

Lead­ing the mourn­ers was To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, who is al­so the Sec­re­tary of the Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my, where Tere­sa Adams worked un­til her death.

Au­gus­tine, who has been main­tain­ing a stony si­lence amid a grow­ing con­tro­ver­sy over leaked au­dio clips, de­liv­ered one of the eu­lo­gies at the packed ser­vice in which he said it was chal­leng­ing to pay trib­ute to his for­mer Bish­op’s High School class­mates.

“Chris­t­ian and Tere­sa lived a very good life on this earth. They con­tributed well. You heard of Chris­t­ian’s con­tri­bu­tion through crick­et, through the Fire Ser­vice and you heard of Tere­sa’s con­tri­bu­tion as an in­for­mal events plan­ner,” he said.

Tere­sa’s sis­ter, Am­ryl Reuben, list­ed her nu­mer­ous qual­i­ties: “Ad­vo­cate, ad­vi­sor, en­cour­ager, con­fi­dante, peace-mak­er, help­ful aunt, lov­ing daugh­ter, dot­ing moth­er, at­ten­tive wife, adorable sis­ter, ef­fer­ves­cent, kind, philo­soph­i­cal, re­source­ful, car­ing, vir­tu­ous, sin­cere, poised, thought­ful, re­spect­ful, un­re­served friend, self­less giv­er, faith­ful serv­er, chic fash­ion­ista, ar­dent shop­per, chef ex­tra­or­di­naire. These are but a few of the qual­i­ties that have been used by fam­i­ly, friends and col­leagues to de­scribe my ba­by sis­ter Tere­sa.”

Al­so pay­ing trib­ute was Chris­t­ian’s god­moth­er Dot­sie Bac­chus.

“To­day we not on­ly share the life sto­ry of this gen­tle­man. but the lega­cy he has left be­hind, to im­pact the lives of his fel­low men,” she said

PRO of the To­ba­go Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion Mar­cus Daniel, THA Mi­nor­i­ty Coun­cil­lor Petal Daniel-Benoit, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Fire Pre­ven­tion Unit of the T&T Fire Ser­vice and Hope An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School were among those who de­liv­ered brief mes­sages dur­ing the ser­vice.

Traf­fic in and around Shaw Park came to a stand­still as the fu­ner­al pro­ces­sion drove from Scar­bor­ough to the Mt St George Methodist Ceme­tery for bur­ial with full mil­i­tary rites.

The cou­ple leaves be­hind three young chil­dren.