Whether she was using YouTube videos to teach herself to play guitar, shopping at Whole Foods by herself at age 12 or wowing middle school dads with her softball-playing prowess, Julia Hyman did her best to get the most out of her young life.
Hyman, 27, one of four fatal victims of a gunman who opened fire in a Midtown office tower, didn’t waste a single day of her life, her friends and family said, even though she was cheated out of so many more.
“She brought energy, determination and grace to all she did, and she worked hard to achieve excellence,” Hyman’s uncle, Rob Pittman, told mourners who packed an East Side synagogue Wednesday for Hyman’s emotional funeral. “Julia was 100 percent 100 percent of the time.”
Hyman, a Cornell graduate who worked as an associate for Rudin Management, was killed Monday evening along with an executive, a security guard and an NYPD police officer when a gunman stormed the lobby and an upper floor of a Park Ave. skyscraper with a semiautomatic rifle.
Rabbi Maurice “Mo” Salth said there was no comfort in platitudes, and urged mourners to pay their respects with stories of shared experiences and a vow to live life the way Hyman did.
He described grief, which filled Manhattan’s Central Synagogue on E. 55th St., as “reflected love.”
“I do not believe in a God that would plan or want this to happen,” Salth said.
“There is nothing that can make this tragedy better or logical. Allow them to mourn, cry with them. Sit quietly with them, not only today, not only at shiva, but throughout our lifetimes.”
Pittman described Hyman as “wise beyond her age,” recalling her as an efficient 2-year-old flower girl at his wedding, and as a determined 12-year-old who took up cooking after an injury sidelined her temporarily from softball and soccer.
“Julia surely had her own style and swagger,” Pittman said. “Julia was always setting the trends. Julia was ahead of the curve without second-guessing herself or concern about fitting in.”
Hyman was the first victim laid to rest in the days after gunman Shane Tamara, 27, stormed the Park Ave. skyscraper, killed four people, and ended his own life.
Family, friends and the whole city are also grieving — reflectively loving — security guard Aland Etienne, Police Officer Didarul Islam and Blackstone investment executive Wesley LePatner, a personal friend of NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
Islam, a 3½-year veteran of the force, will be remembered Thursday at Parkchester Jame Masjid Funeral Home in the Bronx with a viewing followed by a brief prayer service.
Islam was working a paid security detail at the East Midtown office building on his day off when Tamura, who was openly carrying an assault weapon, walked into the lobby and opened fire in what has become New York City’s deadliest shooting in decades.
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