DELMAR - A week after he was killed in a shootout, Trooper David Brinkerhoff was remembered Wednesday as an officer who ran toward danger and a big-hearted friend who loved to laugh.

About five thousand officers from New York and elsewhere stood in somber formation outside Brinkerhoff's funeral to honor the 29-year-old fallen trooper. But it was a handful of loved ones inside who - their voices quavering at times - celebrated Brinkerhoff's life.

They told mourners of a doting dad who handled early morning baby feedings so his wife could sleep, a dedicated trooper who smiled his way through the grueling training required for entry into the elite Mobile Response Team, and of a friend who filled the room with his laughter and the occasional sarcastic comment.

“He danced. He laughed, and at times he embarrassed others around him, but never himself,” older brother Michael Brinkerhoff told mourners. “He was having too much fun.”

Brinkerhoff was killed in a shootout with a fugitive April 25 in a remote farmhouse on the edge of the Catskills.

State police believe Brinkerhoff was struck in the back of his head by a fellow trooper's bullet while trading fire with Travis Trim, who was on the run after a non-fatal trooper shooting the previous day.

Brinkerhoff grew up south of Buffalo, but was based out of Coxsackie, in the Hudson Valley south of Albany. The small Lutheran church in suburban Albany hosting the funeral was where he married his wife Barbara Anne and where the couple baptized their 8-month-old baby, Isabella.

On Wednesday morning, the two-lane road leading to the Bethlehem Lutheran Church was lined with officers in dress grays and blues as Brinkerhoff's casket arrived amid a rumble of police motorcycles and the tolling of a bell.

The church was filled with more than 300 people - family and friends on one side, troopers on the other. Brinkerhoff's white-draped coffin was flanked by floral arrangements in the shape of police badges with his shield number: 4531.

He was buried later in a cemetery near Coxsackie, in the shadow of the Catskills.

Brinkerhoff was eulogized by Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Preston Felton, the acting superintendent of the state police, as a hero. The governor said Brinkerhoff's “superb demeanor” earned him the fondness of people - even if he was giving them a traffic ticket.

“Now there is a true New Yorker,” Spitzer said.

Brinkerhoff's best friend, state police Investigator David Atkins, struggled for composure several times as he told the story of the tight bond he formed with Brinkerhoff beginning in college and through their state police careers. And he described the sinking sense of dread upon hearing last week there was a trooper down in Margaretville. He immediately began calling Brinkerhoff's cell phone. He never got an answer.

“He made me a better person,” Atkins said. He dabbed his eyes as he left the altar and bent down to hug Barbara Anne Brinkerhoff.

She did not speak at the funeral, but the program given to mourners included an open letter she wrote to “My Dearest David” describing how she drew strength from him after the birth of their daughter, who has Down syndrome.

“I will never forget how her little face would light up when you came home from work. We will miss you more than you could ever imagine, but I have no regrets ... You died doing what you loved doing.”

Brinkerhoff's family has said they forgive the shooter. The Rev. Mark Mueller said Brinkerhoff's widow told him that, “David would have forgiven anyone who had anything to do with his death. Because we know that's the kind of faith David had.”