Awash in sorrow
Mourners erupt in grief as procession of caskets is wheeled out of church

By Will Higgins
will.higgins@indystar.com

June 8, 2006
THE ONLY ONE LEFT: Mario Albarran, the only surviving son of Emma Valdez, one of the seven people slain, is consoled after the caskets left the church. The Mass was in Spanish and English. - MATT DETRICH / The Star

Wheeling six caskets up a church aisle and out to the waiting hearses takes a long time.

And in that time Wednesday, what had been a mostly staid Catholic funeral Mass erupted in grief.

Mourners sighed. They gasped. They laid their hands on one another's shoulders.

They wailed.

About 600 people attended the funeral Mass at SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral for Emma Valdez, 46; her children Magno Albarran, 29, Flora Albarran, 22, Alberto Covarrubias, 11, and David Covarrubias, 8; and grandson Luis Albarran, 5. A funeral for Alberto Covarrubias, 56, Valdez's longtime boyfriend, was held Tuesday.

The seven were gunned down June 1. The crime stunned their Near-Eastside neighborhood and the city.

"It may not be a Katrina in scope," said Elder Lionel T. Rush, "but it is in intensity."

Rush was one of several black ministers who attended "to show support to the family and the Hispanic community. I hope this is an opportunity to create community."

The two men held in the family's deaths are black, the seven victims Hispanic.

"The real tragedy," said the Rev. Melvin J. Jackson, one of the black ministers at the funeral, "would be if this divided people instead of uniting people."

The funeral Mass, which lasted more than an hour, was in Spanish and English. "This was a family who lived in both worlds," said Anna Urias Hail, a family friend who helped plan the funeral.

Six Catholic priests took part, including Indianapolis' archbishop, the Rev. Daniel Buechlein. Mayor Bart Peterson did not attend but sent a representative.

One of the priests, the Rev. Michael O'Mara, who knew the family, mentioned the fates of the two men accused of the killings. "May we desire to comfort this family and the neighborhood, rather than call out for more deaths -- even to those who carried them out," he said.

Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi attended the funeral and said this week that he will seek the death penalty against one of the men, and that he'd prosecute the case himself.

There was more than sadness at the funeral. There was fear. Tarcisio Trujillo held his son close.

"There is an evil in our midst," Trujillo said. "We've especially made a list of rules about what we can do to protect ourselves and our family." His son, Tarcisio Jr., 7, reeled them off: Don't open the door for strangers; don't play in front of the door; when inside the home, stay close together.

The elder Covarrubias' body will stay in Indianapolis. He was buried Tuesday at Washington Park East Cemetery, next to his grandson Joshua Monjaraz, who accidentally suffocated in 1998 at the age of 4 months.

After their trip up the aisle, the six caskets were loaded into hearses. They soon will be headed on an airplane for burial in Zacapuato, Mexico, where Valdez's parents and grandmother live.

Call Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043.
Star reporter Aldrich Tan contributed to this story.