Newark Native Killed in Charleston Church Massacre to Be Laid to Rest

Hundreds of mourners are expected to attend the funeral for the Newark, New Jersey, native who was among the nine killed in a massacre inside a historic black church in South Carolina last week. 

Services for Sharonda Coleman-Singleton will be held at the Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston, South Carolina,  Thursday afternoon after a visitation and a ceremony honoring her as a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

Coleman-Singleton, 45, was a Newark native who graduated from Vailsburg High School in 1987, according to her Facebook page. She got a masters degree at Montclair State University and has family that still lives in the Garden State.

She was a track coach at a high school in a Charleston suburb and served as an assistant pastor at Emmanuel AME Church. She is survived by a daughter and two sons, one of whom is a baseball player at Charleston Southern University. 

The funeral is one of two Thursday for the nine men and women killed in the shooting June 17 at Emmanuel African Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston. Services for Ethel Lance, a grandmother who worked as a housekeeper and sexton for the church, will be held Thursday morning.

Coleman-Singleton and eight others, including pastor and state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, were gunned down during a bible study by Dylan Storm Roof, a 21-year-old man who had posted photos of the Confederate flag and white supremacy symbols to his website in the months before the shooting. Roof was captured a day after the shooting and is charged with nine counts of murder.

On Wednesday, Pinckney's casket was transported to the South Carolina State House in a horse-drawn caisson. His body laid state in the capitol's rotunda that afternoon as mourners waited hours to pay their respects. 

Pinckney's funeral is scheduled for Friday in Charleston. Thousands are expected to attend the ceremony, where President Obama will deliver a eulogy.

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