CdM High graduate mourned

Allan Oakley Hunter Jr. always knew his son was different from other children. His friends described the 18-year-old as a genius with a kind heart.

“He was the quintessential artist,” Hunter said. “We had a little Mozart on our hands, but with that came a certain fragility and vulnerability.”

That fragility reached a breaking point for reasons nobody can fathom.

Pictures of Corona del Mar High school graduate Allan “Trey” Oakley Hunter III cast on twin jumbo screens at his funeral Friday showed a smiling kid with loving parents and a bright future.

Friends and family remembered Trey as an artistic boy with a great sense of humor and wondered why he chose to take his own life last week by jumping from a dormitory building at NYU during his first month of college.

“Beautiful boy, where are you? What have you done?” Trey’s father, co-founder of the apartment search engine rent.com, said in his eulogy. “We’re drowning down here in a sea of tears.”

About 200 gathered at Mariners Church in Irvine Friday morning for Trey’s funeral.

The church was filled with crying, hugging young people dressed in black as the Tina Turner song “I Don’t Want to Fight” played over a slide show of Trey.

His senior portrait from Corona del Mar High taken last school year showed him grinning in spite of his braces.

Authorities believe Trey jumped from his high-rise New York City dormitory building in the early hours of Sept. 22 after an argument with a high school girlfriend who was visiting him at school.

“He was genuinely excited about starting this new chapter in his life,” Trey’s mother, Sherry Hunter, wrote in a letter that was read at the service.

She purchased a plane ticket for her son to visit over Thanksgiving when she returned from attending NYU orientation with him.

“I never thought that when I left him in New York it would be the last time I would see him,” she said.

The death has attracted media attention over the past week, with some wondering why a gifted college student from an affluent Newport Beach family would choose to take his own life in such a public manner.

Family and friends at the service offered no answers, but spoke of a sensitive, talented young man.

“He wasn’t in his right mind when he did it,” Hunter said.

Friends remembered Trey as a kid with impeccable taste in music and movies who acted as an artistic mentor to many.

Although he had more than 800 CDs in his music collection by the time he was in high school, Trey wasn’t materialistic, his father said.

Even though the parking lot at Corona del Mar High was packed with BMWs during his school days there, Trey was thrilled when his father bought him a used Toyota with 100,000 miles on it. He didn’t even own a wallet, his father said.

“I found someone who understood the way I looked at the world,” friend Eric Scullin said of Trey. “To find out that this was the way it was going to end for him, that was the hardest part.”

Hunter said he worries about his son’s friends.

“Should they ever hear those lies of self doubt, let them reach out for someone,” he prayed during the service.

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at brianna.bailey@latimes.com.