Farewell to a Friend : Tribute: As family members and classmates gather at the funeral of slain Fairfield High student Demetrius Rice, they echo calls for safer schools.

About 1,000 friends and family members gathered Thursday at the funeral of Demetrius L. Rice, the 16-year-old Fairfax High School student killed by a classmate’s stray bullet, pledging that his untimely death would inspire a renewed fight for safety in the city’s schools.

Rice is “in the house of the lord,” said Fairfax High School football coach Terrell Ray to an emotional audience crowded into Transfiguration Church on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. “Demetrius says . . . he wants you to know that his death will not be in vain. He says he’d like to see families unite. He says he’d like to see churches and schools and communities have better communication.”

Bishop Carl Fisher of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles had sharper words for city and school officials.

“It often appears that our society is on a bullet train to hell,” Fisher said, decrying the breakdown of moral values in a sermon peppered with attacks on abortion and on laws that prohibit prayer in schools.

“No wonder our young people are so confused today. . . . It is time for people of courage to come forth and call on our young to embrace a sense of morality in their lives.”

Standing behind Rice’s closed coffin, which was covered with the youth’s red football jersey, Fisher said it is “one of those moments of unspeakable sorrow and even outrage that a young, healthy, vibrant 16-year-old should have his life ended in the manner in which it was.”

For Rosa Granville, 16, the death of her friend Demetrius inspired anger.

“It should have been someone else,” she said in an interview, controlling her tears. “He had goals. He was going to make it. He was going to go to college. . . .”

Jason Cunningham, 16, a pallbearer who had known Rice since the second grade, said outside the church that there was no reason for his friend’s death: “He wasn’t in gangs. He was just calm, cool and collected.”

In interviews, friends and family members described Rice as a quiet, almost shy young man who had earned good grades and was determined to go to college.

He was the kind of person you could trust, they said, someone you could confide in.

“He was very intense . . . he knew where he wanted to go,” said Father Joseph Hanly, associate pastor at Transfiguration Church and the clergyman who had guided Rice when he came to the church seeking religious instruction. Rice was baptized last April.

“He was just very independent,” said Jerome Bryant, 17. “You couldn’t stop him from doing what he wanted to do.”

But when a classmate’s .357 magnum went off accidentally in a first-period English class Jan. 21, a bullet pierced Rice’s body and killed him instantly. Another student, 17-year-old Eli Kogman, was injured in the shooting, which police said occurred when the gun discharged while a 15-year-old student was playing with it.

The boy, whose name is being withheld because of his age, had been carrying his grandfather’s gun to school for protection because he had been beaten and robbed by gang members a week earlier, authorities said.

Jamey Miller, Rice’s godfather, said Wednesday that the boy’s mother, Mildred Hillard, has “forgiven the boy who shot her son. But neither myself, nor my family, can forgive the act.”

Hillard last week appealed for donations for her son’s funeral. Contributions to the Demetrius Rice Memorial Fund have poured in, Miller said.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has decided to use hand-held metal detectors to randomly screen students and plans to set up a hot line for students to report those who bring guns to school.

School board member Jeff Horton, who represents the Fairfax area, said he hopes the killing of Rice will “trigger an awareness that things have just gone too far . . . but my fear is that this becomes just another horror to be put in the archives.”

Craig Scott, assistant football coach at Fairfax who said Rice was like one of his children, pledged that the boy’s death will make a difference.

“I’ll dedicate the rest of my years at the school to Demetrius’ honor and make sure his death will not be in vain,” said Scott. “His memory will burn in my heart.”