Services held for 3 victims of murder-suicide

December 21, 2011 (MORRIS, Ill.)

In all, five people were killed last Friday when investigators say Sara McMeen shot her boyfriend and her three children and then killed herself.

Visitation and funeral services were held in Dwight for McMeen. A wake was held in Morris for Daniel Warren, 29, and his 10-month-old daughter, Maggie.

A distraught but stoic group of family and friends filed out of McMeen's funeral, taking care to shield the casket of the 30-year-old who took her own life, according to the Livingston County sheriff, after murdering her live-in boyfriend and three children last Friday afternoon.

McMeen's family has pleaded for privacy as they come to terms with what she did. There are no official details on what her motivation may have been for the crime that has shocked the region.

"It's just a terrible tragedy. I don't know people get through something like this. They got to do a lot of praying about it," said Ken Willis.

In Morris, co-workers of Danny Warren from his work in security at the Dresden nuclear power plant came to the funeral home to pay their respects to a lost colleague.

"Excellent man. Well devoted to his job and to his family. Thought a lot of his child and took care of the other two kids very well," said Darren Flannigan, colleague.

Wendy Warren says her son loved his work and tried his best to be the world's best dad and worked hard on his relationship with McMeen, who suffered from mental illness.

"There wasn't anything that you could say, it was this or it was this. They worked through everything, they were close and they were tight, but they were off and on, off and on," Warren.

As the mother and grandmother of victims of the domestic tragedy, Wendy Warren is relying on faith and friends to make sense of it all.

"No reason. In my wildest imagination, I can't see how and why she could have done it. She seemed happy. She loved her kids. She loved my son," she said.

Visitation for 8-year-old Skyler Lemke and 7-year-old Ian Lemke will be Thursday.

The Department of Children and Family Services told ABC7 that a report was filed one year ago about possible neglect at the home. Two months later, the department found that those allegations of neglect of two children were unfounded.

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