SPRING, Texas (AP) – Six white caskets containing the bodies of a suburban Houston couple and four of their five children were wheeled into a church for funeral services Wednesday, not far from where the family was gunned down at their home a week ago.
Stephen Stay, 39, his wife Katie, 34, and their four youngest children were being buried in a private ceremony after services at their Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The couple’s 15-year-old daughter, Cassidy, survived a gunshot wound by playing dead, then called police and identified her aunt’s ex-husband, Ronald Lee Haskell, 33, as the gunman. Haskell had been divorced from Katie Stay’s sister and records show he had a history of domestic violence. The family was shot when they refused to divulge his ex-wife’s whereabouts, authorities said.
Haskell was arrested a few hours later after a police standoff and now faces multiple charges of capital murder.
“I don’t know you ever prepare yourself for something like this because you don’t expect this,” Don Guthrie, 57, a family friend and fellow church member, said before the funeral. “This is a shock. This is incomprehensible.”