Two Children Killed by Father Are Buried in a Single White Casket : Simi Valley: A tearful service for Breanna and Michael Sasse is sweetened with the sounds of a choir. The family vows to fight for stronger laws against domestic violence.

Side by side, two Simi Valley children were laid to rest in a single white casket beneath a shady oak tree Thursday, four days after their father shot them to death.

Nearly 200 mourners had bade farewell earlier to Breanna Sasse, 4, and her brother, Michael, 3, in a tearful church funeral sweetened with the sounds of a children’s choir and assurances from their mother that her babies were together now “in a better place.”

Surrounded by flowers, Debra Kaye Sasse urged her family and friends gathered at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in western Simi Valley to remember her children by pressing for stronger laws to protect families from domestic violence.

In a wavering yet clear voice, she said of Breanna and Michael, “They’re safe and happy, and nothing can hurt them ever again.”

Then she added: “Please tell the people in your life that you love them. Don’t take them for granted. There may come a day when you turn to hug them, and they’re gone.”

On Sunday, Michael and Breanna and Debra Sasse were just days away from the legal shelter of a three-year restraining order against the children’s father, Larry Sasse. Apparently distraught that his marriage was ending, Sasse shot the children and himself to death while they were with him on a custody visit.

At the time of the shootings, Simi Valley police were investigating allegations that Sasse had assaulted his wife and had made death threats against her as well as her parents and some of her co-workers.

“Our lives have been shaken, to say the least, and our community shocked by this horrific tragedy,” said Rev. Dave Peckham, the chaplain at Simi Valley Hospital, where Debra Sasse works as a pharmacy technician.

“We have certainly experienced the sting of death as we have been forced to say goodby to Breanna and her brother, Michael,” Peckham said at the church service. But since the shootings, he said, family, friends and neighbors have gathered around Debra Sasse and her parents, Dan and Kathleen Forrester, to offer support.

At the service, a family friend sought to make sense of Breanna and Michael’s deaths.

“The Lord takes many away, even in infancy, that they may escape the envy of man,” said John Reid, a co-worker of Dan Forrester. “They were too pure and too beautiful to live on this earth.”

In unison, a choir of Breanna and Michael’s aunts and cousins sang to the lilting strains of a piano, “I am a child of God, and he has sent me here. He helps me to understand his words before it grows too late.”

As the choir sang, friends and relatives cried softly, and Simi Valley police officers who had worked on the Sasse case looked on.

Then, Breanna and Michael’s relatives bore their small casket to a waiting hearse, which took it from the Mormon church to nearby Assumption Cemetery.

Tree-filtered sunlight dappled the grave site. A gentle breeze riffled the grass where Debra Sasse sat on a folding chair beside her parents, her hands clasped before her face, surrounded by mourners.

There, Father John Sigler read a brief Gospel passage and laid hands on the family’s heads in blessing.

Then, mourners stopped one by one to hug Michael and Breanna’s mother and grandparents, some touching the casket and laying white carnations and roses atop it in farewell.

Among them were Larry Sasse’s sister, Dyana Sasse, and her two daughters.

“He loved his children more than anything,” Sasse said of her brother, crying softly. “And it’s very hard for me to believe this has happened.”

A funeral for Larry Sasse is planned for 9:30 a.m. today at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Tempe, Ariz., she said.

As mourners drifted back to their cars, Forrester vowed his family would fight for laws that offer families quicker protection from potential abuse.

Nodding at the casket, he said, “This is not something that, when my little babies there get lowered, we’ll get over it. We won’t.”