Farewell to Ashleigh; Mourners pay tribute to a girl 'full of promise'.

Byline: Tom Wilkinson 

MOURNERS packed a church yesterday for the moving funeral of a 17-year-old girl allegedly killed by a man she met on a social networking site.

Up to 500 people filled the pews and stood at the back of St Cuthbert's Parish Church for Ashleigh Hall's service.

The vicar, the Reverend Robert Williamson, read a tribute written by a family friend which left the congregation, many of them teenagers, in tears.

He said: "Ashleigh was a young girl full of promise. She had her whole life ahead of her. She was taken from us all unexpectedly which hurt and broke a lot of hearts."

Her body was found in a field in Sedgefield last month, after telling her mother the night before she was staying at a friend's house.

A 32-year-old homeless man has been charged with kidnap, manslaughter and failing to identify a new address, as required by the Sex Offences Act.

The vicar's reading continued: "Ashleigh would do anything for you. If you had a job to do, Ashleigh was there."

She was much loved by local youngsters and was studying childcare at Darlington College.

The tribute continued: "Ashleigh would never hurt anyone, she was always polite and never had a bad word for anyone. We all love and miss you so much. Ashleigh rest in peace."

Her grandfather Mike Hall, 69, linked arms with her mother Andrea Hall, 39, as they walked over the cobbles into the church behind the coffin.

It was topped by a floral tribute in the shape of a pink Playboy bunny.

That was the motif plastered all over her bedroom walls, duvet and curtains.

Included in the service were pop songs by JLS and the coffin was carried out to Leona Lewis's version of the Snow Patrol song Run. Among the floral tributes were pink carnations and roses spelling the word Ash. On a card her mother wrote: "Can't understand why you have been taken from me. I love you and miss you every day. All my love, Mum."

The popular 17-year-old was her mother's "rock," she said in an interview after the tragedy, and Ashleigh helped look after her sisters Olivia, six, Ellie, four, and Evie, aged one.

After the 30-minute service the coffin was taken away for a private cremation.

Durham Police continue to appeal to the public to help trace an Acer laptop computer believed to belong to the suspect.

Meanwhile, the Government is facing calls to make internet safety a compulsory part of the national curriculum following Ashleigh Hall's death.

Councillors in Darlington have called for more to be done to keep children safe online, and are preparing a report on how this may be achieved.

The 17-year-old's former headteacher said pupils at Darlington College had been spoken to about her death and warned of the dangers presented by social networking sites.

At a meeting of Darlington Borough Council's children and young people's scrutiny committee yesterday, councillors heard the national curriculum gave no advice on how to teach internet safety. They said it should be made compulsory for all pupils to have access to online mentoring and to information provided by the thinkuknow website and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

Jenny Chapman, the council's cabinet member for children and young people, said: "Something that concerns me is that this type of resource is not available to every young person in Darlington. That is a challenge that we, as an authority, need to take on. Perhaps we can campaign for that to be on the curriculum for all young people in our schools."

Debbie Leigh, interim principal at Darlington College, said every pupil at the college had received internet safety reminders when they returned after the half-term holiday.

She said: "We have got to try to take some good out of it. It's about one of our students, it's about this business of 'it will never happen to me'."