LITTLE ROCK—It’s difficult to imagine Anne Pressly at eternal rest in heaven because the slain anchorwoman was so full of energy during her life on earth, a priest told mourners Thursday at a memorial service.

Pressly, 26, died Saturday of injuries suffered in a brutal attack at her home. About 800 attended a memorial service at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, which Pressly attended.

“When I pray this last prayer, I can’t pray for blessed rest. I can pray for everlasting peace, but I just don’t think Anne will sit around for blessed rest,” the Rt. Rev. T.J. Johnston of Mount Pleasant, S.C., said.

The anchorwoman’s mother found her body Oct. 20, a half-hour before Pressly was due on KATV’s 5 a.m. “Daybreak” program. Pressly had been beaten about the head and upper body and never regained consciousness before dying five days later.

Pressly, Johnston said, was full of “happiness and energy and cheer. How can you be cheery at that hour of the morning? I don’t know. That’s just Anne.”

St. Andrew’s pastor, the Rt. Rev. Philip Jones, said Pressly possessed “the complete package.”

“How she could hold life with such flair and such grace and such beauty—with talent, with ambition, with relationships. It was contagious; and she loved Jesus,” Jones said.

“We thank you for giving her to us, her family and friends, to know and to love as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage,” he said.

Mourners filled the 650 seats in St. Andrew’s sanctuary and another 150 or so watched on television monitors in a vestibule and parlor. The crowd included nearly all of KATV’s news staff plus dozens of reporters and photographers from the ABC affiliate’s competitors.

A string quartet played classical music before the memorial service, which was based on an Easter liturgy.