Mourners Seek Solace at Rites for Slain Children

STOCKTON —  Every Saturday in recent months, 6-year-old Thuy Tran took her place among the other members of the youth group at St. Luke’s Catholic church to celebrate Mass. This time, the group gathered for another Mass at St. Luke’s, a funeral Mass for little Thuy Tran.

More than 600 people gathered at St. Luke’s to honor the Vietnamese girl in one of three services conducted in Stockton on Saturday in memory of the five Southeast Asian refugee schoolchildren slain Tuesday by gunman Patrick Edward Purdy, who then took his own life.

The congregation at St. Luke’s sang haunting Vietnamese songs of mourning, after observing a minute of silence to honor the five children who died. Four were girls, Thuy Tran, Ram Chun, 8, Oeun Lim, 8, and Sokhim An, 6, and one was a 9-year-old boy, Rathanar Or. All but Tran were of Cambodian descent.

After a prayer that the physical wounds of the 30 others injured--and the emotional wounds of the entire community--will be healed, Nguyen Dang Sy, leader of the youth group, addressed the hushed congregation.

‘Safety Is Not Possible’

“Over the past 14 years, our people have looked for a country that would offer us shelter and safety,” Sy said. “We realize that in a world such as ours, safety is not possible.

“What we have found is something more important--the love that people share here. . . . The tragedy that cut short Thuy Tran’s innocent life is not in vain when the result is love for one another in the community.”

After the Roman Catholic ceremony, several hundred members of the congregation--including members of Thuy Tran’s family, wearing traditional white headbands of mourning--marched in solemn procession from the church to the cemetery, about a mile away, where the little girl’s body was entombed.

Several of the family, including the girl’s mother, Thin Tran, collapsed in tears at the crypt, and an elderly woman fainted.

At Central United Methodist Church, where a memorial service was conducted for all the shooting victims, Patricia Busher, principal of Cleveland Elementary School, where the slaughter took place, offered a prayer “for the safety of children everywhere.”

“We believe that every one of us needs to watch our children, to listen to our children and to know our children more closely . . . to look for signs of trouble,” she said. “For I believe the man who did this terrible thing was a troubled child who grew to be a troubled adult.”

Barbara Fass, mayor of Stockton, expressed hope that her city can “take this time and turn it into a monument to a community that cares.”

Buddhist Service

State Sen. John Garamendi, the Democratic legislator whose 5th Senate District includes Stockton, told the refugees that Americans are truly sorry for what happened “and we pledge to all of you who came to this state and to this great nation to never let this happen again.”

A Buddhist funeral service was conducted at a Stockton mortuary for Rathanar Or and Oeun Lim. Barefoot monks, clad in saffron robes, chanted traditional prayers as about 100 mourners sat quietly, palms joined in prayer. The brief, open-casket service was conducted entirely in the Cambodian language.

Funeral services for Ram Chun and Sokhim An will be conducted here today.

All physical signs of the tragedy had been erased at the school by Saturday, except for a single bunch of roses, a few coins and a brief note, placed at the base of the concrete slab marked “Cleveland.”

“God loves you,” the note said.