The Nation : Anti-Drug Crusader Eulogized at Mass

Slain anti-drug crusader Maria Hernandez was eulogized at a Mass attended by 300 mourners in New York, including Mayor Edward I. Koch. There was heavy security to prevent further violence against her family. Hernandez, 34, a mother of three who with her husband had fought to force drug dealers out of her Brooklyn neighborhood, was shot to death last week, possibly in retaliation for her anti-drug efforts. During a 70-minute Mass in Spanish and English at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, the Rev. Charles Plock praised the woman’s efforts to transform her neighborhood into a place where there would be “no mourning, no tears, no fear. She labored and she struggled and she fought. She organized people to make her community reflect this new heaven and this new Earth,” Plock said. “Maria gave her life because she was not afraid to speak the truth.”