Friends, classmates and neighbors remember Danielle Lawrence with candlelight service and procession

After two days of the howling, almost violent, winds that buffeted the tall trees of Wildwood Acres in Wading River, the cold night air tonight was eerily still as a candlelight procession made its way to the to the Lawrence home on 14th Street.

The candles’ flames flickered in the darkness as nearly 100 people walked in silence the two short blocks from the community center to the scene of last night’s tragedy. One by one, friends, neighbors and classmates placed their candles on the ground around a tree in front of the two-story residence on 14th Street where last night, police say, an enraged man with a gun killed his girlfriend, her teenage daughter and himself.

“An unspeakable, senseless act of violence,” said a neighbor, who stood with her dog in the narrow road at the corner of Hulse Avenue and 14th Street, where the Lawrence home stands on a treed lot, as she watched the procession file past.

The solemn quiet and stillness there this evening was stark in contrast to the scene in the same location last night.

“I heard loud arguing and I heard a gunshot,” said Jesse Greenberg, who lives across the road from the house where police say Thomas Calhoun shot and killed Tanya Lawrence and her daughter, Danielle, before turning his gun on himself.  (See prior story.)

Jesse, 14, said he watched a nightmare unfold from his bedroom window. Police “SWAT teams” descended on the neighborhood, he said. “It was crazy,” Jesse said. “There were cops all over the place.”

Jesse, who organized tonight’s candlelight service with his friends Jeremy Simone and Pieter Williams, said he felt a “responsibility to do something to remember” his neighbor, Danielle, whom he recalled as a sweet girl who was nice to everyone.

The Wildwood Acres neighborhood association opened up the community pavilion on Hulse and 16th Street after board members heard of plans to hold a candlelight service outdoors in the brutal cold. Mourners — mostly Danielle’s teenage contemporaries — gathered in the pavilion for a brief memorial service before the slow walk to site of the crime.

Danielle’s friends and classmates at Riverhead High School tearfully shared memories of happy times.

“She was so talented and so cool — and I was really lame,” said Audrey Grothmann, a Riverhead High School freshman. “She was so important to me,” she said, choking up as she added, “I love you, Danielle.”

Amaya Coach, a close friend of Danielle’s since early childhood, sobbed, “You’re gone but not forgotten, Danielle.”

Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.

Photos: Peter Blasl