Families packing out Matthew Clarke's funeral yesterday were urged to "take their heads out of the sand" and fight for a safer community.

About 1,000 people crammed into St. Paul's AME Church, with many standing in the aisles and more spilling out of the doors, to give the father-of-two the big send-off his family had asked for.

The congregation clapped and yelled approval as Reverend Judith Gardner gave an emotional rallying call for everyone to do their bit to restore family values and end the violence which has blighted Bermuda for the past few years. Singer and songwriter Mr. Clarke, 31, was found dead in his Pembroke bedroom by his fiancée Charlitta Spencer on Wednesday last week. Three men have been charged with his murder.

Since news of his death broke, tributes have poured in describing Mr. Clarke as a good family man who lived for his two young children, Attiyah and Matteo, and their mother Ms Spencer.

Yesterday, Rev. Gardner told the congregation: "We are living in a time where we need to make up our minds.

"It's time for you to stop straddling the fence and it's time for us to follow God.

"We must ask ourselves the question: how long must we continue to go on and watch other young men taken from their families because of acts of violence?

"How long will you be scared to come out of your house and go into certain parts of the Island in which you live?

"How long will mothers have to be in fear every time you leave the house, that that may be the very last time that they will see you alive?

"How long will you tolerate this before you open your mouth and speak?"

As congregation members shouted: "Yes, yes, yes,".

Rev. Gardner continued: "If there's a breakdown in the family, there's a breakdown in the community and the community is crippled.

"Parents need to take their heads out of the sand. If you have a son who has no job but is driving a BMW, you must know what it is.

"It's time to take back our families, our community, because life is life. The answer is in the family maintaining standards and values and choices to follow God in times like this.

"How long? How long will you continue in this way? The answer is not long, because now is the time to stand up for your community.

"For too long we have allowed our children to participate in what we didn't and we forgot to give them what we did have."

The two-hour service featured a host of contributions from family members and friends who sang, danced and read poems they had written.

It was followed by an internment at St. John's Cemetery in Pembroke.