A broken-hearted crowd gathered outside a mosque in the Bronx Wednesday. A community came together for a funeral to say goodbye to Diaka Kourouma — a daughter, a student, a friend.

“The community from Guinea, New York City, everybody here today for my daughter,” said Aliou Kourouma, Diaka’s father.

“You were one of my favorite students,” said one of Diaka Kourouma's teachers, Celeste Palmer. “You always had such a nice beautiful smile.”

“You could never stay mad at [Kourouma]. Her laugh always makes you happy,” said her friend Naba Diane.

“She was extremely loving and caring,” said her friend Nabintou Sanogo. “You’d be around her for one day, you felt like you knew her for a million years. You felt like you knew her forever.”

The 16-year-old drowned last week in the waters off Rockaway Beach in Queens.

It was one of two unrelated drownings that day, just a few blocks apart.

Both happened in sections of the beach where crews are building jetties to help prevent erosion on the coast.

At 6 p.m. that night, the beach closed for construction.

The lifeguards, who had been on duty, went home for the day.

“We did not see no signs that said don’t enter the beach,” Sanogo said. “If the beach was to be closed, why did nobody tell us at 6 o’clock, you guys have to evacuate?”

Kourouma's friends who were with her that day say they got to the beach around noon, swam all day and then at 6 p.m., lifeguards directed them to a different area of the beach.

“We literally went to an area where they said there’s lifeguards over there,” Diane said. “We wouldn’t have stayed there if we knew there was no lifeguards.”

“We all had a strong bond with her,” Diane added while fighting through tears. “We just wanted to go to the beach to have fun.”

Now, these girls are left remembering their friend, and the final moments of her life — one taken too soon.

Christopher Hibbert, Kourouma's Principal at Validus Preparatory Academy, said just over a week ago, Kourouma went on a college visit to Delaware St. University.

He says Kourouma fell in love with the school, and this past week, she applied to go to college there next year.