MOURNERS packed into St Mary's Church in Leyland near Preston on Friday to bid their final farewell to tragic leukaemia victim Lianne Neilson.

It was a highly charged service, with hardly a dry eye in the congregation as Lianne's favourite pop song, Missing You, by Puff Daddy was played.

Father Charles Macauley spoke of Lianne's courage and said: "She was young and she was beautiful with life opening up before her, then that life ebbed away so quickly that we were all shaken." He described her as a fighter: "In 18 months she lived as much of her life as many of us have done in 16 years."

Father Charles praised her selflessness and the way she always thought of others even in the moments before her death.

On the day she died, Lianne had woken up, wished her mother 'happy birthday' then closed her eyes for the final time. She was 14 years old and had fought against the adult version of the cancer for two years.

She had told her family she didn't want to die, but on Sunday July 20 in Manchester Children's Hospital, she suffered kidney failure after her body rejected bone marrow from a transplant. The family has received hundreds of sympathy cards from well wishers including Lianne's former school pals at St Mary's High.

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