By BOBBY HORN JR.
Close to 1,000 people attended memorial service for slain Nimitz High graduate Tynesha Stewart, whose life was short cut by violence last month.
The service was held in the Nimitz High School Auditorium on April 14.
During the service, Nimitz Principal Ken Kippel remembered Stewart as a student who was highly dedicated to her studies and who had plans for the future.
During the service, memorial poems were recited and Gospel songs sung as friends and family mourned the loss of the 19-year old.
Among those speaking was television news personality Linda Lorelle. Stewart was a 2005 recipient of a Linda Lorelle Scholarship Foundation scholarship. She was an engineering major at Texas A&M University when she died.
Stewart was reported missing by family last month after she returned home for Spring Break. Witnesses say that Stewart was last seen at 4:15 a.m. on March 15 outside of boyfriend Timothy Shepherds apartment.
Shepherd initially told police that Stewart left his apartment on foot wearing pajamas and carrying her cell phone. He later confessed to strangling her to death.
Police believe that he then dismembered the body and burned the remains on his grill before dumping the remains in a trash receptacle. During a search of Shepherds apartment police found, among other items, 17 pieces of bone fragments and hair.