Sharing in the Grief : Hundreds Gather to Pay Respects to 2 Girls Killed by Mother

A memorial service Thursday night for two little girls, Amy Elizabeth and Stephanie Marie Cushing, who were shot to death by their mother, brought together the many people who were touched by their deaths.

Standing outside St. Timothy Catholic Church was Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Avant, who said he has not been able to shake from his mind the grief of Sunday night when he responded to a call at a Laguna Niguel neighborhood and found the mother, Kristine Cushing, after the fatal shooting.

“I am just paying my respects,” said Avant, the father of five, who said he has struggled to no avail to make sense out of what happened.

After the hymns and prayers were over, there was a poignant moment when a priest asked a group of girls in their Brownie uniforms to go over and say hello to the grieving grandparents and father.

The father, Marine Lt. Col. John P. Cushing Jr., hugged the children, who had been in the same Brownie troop as his older daughter, Amy. Tears welled in his eyes. At his side in the front row were relatives of Kristine Cushing, including her parents, sister and brothers, some of whom had come from as far as Florida and Boston.

About 400 people filled the all-purpose hall at St. Timothy Catholic Church, the place that the family had selected for friends and neighbors to say farewell to 8-year-old Amy and 4-year-old Stephanie.

On the altar amid the many bouquets of flowers was a picture of the pretty sisters. They wore matching purple and pink dresses with giant pink bows on their brown tresses.

Father Bruce Lavery urged the gathering, especially the tearful children, to try to be upbeat.

“They are still here with us,” Lavery told them. “Their life is changed, not ended.”

Lavery said news of the deaths made him as well as family members and friends wonder what they could have done to prevent the tragedy.

“Recognize now what we can do and don’t worry about what we didn’t do,” he counseled.

Besides friends and relatives, others who attended the memorial included enlisted men and officers from the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, where Cushing commands a squadron of F/A-18 jet fighters. Navy Chaplain Brenda Bradley read the 23rd Psalm. Some of the wives of the pilots in his squadron brought food that was spread on tables outside for the mourners to share.

Lavery observed that Amy Elizabeth and Stephanie Marie were well-known at St. Timothy Catholic Church, where they had both attended the Tiny Tims preschool religious education program. Always at their side had been their mother, Kristine, who this year began teaching a Sunday school class at the church.

Nikki Erickson, director of the church preschool program, recalled earlier this week that the Cushing sisters appeared “the spitting image of their mommy.” She said they were also “sweet and well-behaved.”

Erickson said Amy was a particularly bright student. She was a third-grader in the gifted and talented education program at Moulton Elementary School, where Kristine Cushing also was an active volunteer, serving as a room-mother for Amy’s class.

Erickson described Kristine Cushing as “a wonderful and devoted mother who loved her children. . . . If you were going to give an award of Mother of the Year, it could have gone to Kristine.

“It is a very heartbreaking time for the parish,” Erickson said of the children’s violent deaths.

Some of the bouquets on the altar had been bought with money collected by neighbors who were searching for a way to demonstrate their support for the grieving family.

“I stayed out until 10 last night collecting money, and there was not one person in the neighborhood who didn’t feel he should contribute,” said Laura Taylor, one of the organizers of the collection in the Niguel Summit housing tract where the Cushings live.

A police report released earlier this week said Kristine Cushing, 39, was bleeding from the head when she told the first sheriff’s deputy to arrive on the scene: “I’m crazy, I shot my daughters. They’re upstairs.”

Minutes later, sheriff’s deputies found Amy on the floor and Stephanie on the bed, both in their nightclothes. A .38-caliber pistol was found near the bed.

Court documents revealed that the Cushings were in the midst of a divorce after 17 years of marriage and that Kristine Cushing had complained she was under severe mental stress.