Even as mourn­ers flocked in­to the St Bene­dict’s Ro­man Catholic Church yes­ter­day to bid farewell to Palmiste mur­der vic­tims George Quin­tero, his wife In­grid Gar­cia-Quin­tero and their daugh­ter Marisol Gar­cia-Quin­tero, the mo­tive be­hind their slay­ings re­mained a mys­tery.

De­scrib­ing the mur­ders of the fam­i­ly as a cow­ard­ly act, Fa­ther Wil­fred John told mourn­ers to leave their killers in the hands of God.

In his homi­ly, John said the Quin­teros’ loved ones will car­ry this bur­den for a long time be­cause of the “sud­den­ness of this tragedy.”

Pray­ing that one day they will reach the stage of ac­cep­tance and peace, John said, “Even now you are ask­ing ques­tions, all of us are ask­ing ques­tions and we are find­ing no an­swers.”

He said such tragedies will have a phys­i­cal, spir­i­tu­al and men­tal toll on peo­ple.

“I am not go­ing in­to the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of crime right now be­cause that will be dig­ni­fy­ing those who per­pe­trat­ed this cow­ard­ly act. We are not here to dig­ni­fy them. We are not here to lift them up. We are not here to let them say ‘well we did this and we made the news and the priest pre­sid­ing spoke about some­thing that we did,’ we not go­ing to dig­ni­fy that.”

Not­ing that it was the sea­son of East­er, he said, “We are go­ing to leave them in the hands of God, leave them. They will get no ac­co­lades from us to­day those who are be­hind this cow­ard­ly act.”

How­ev­er, he con­ced­ed said the ques­tions on the mind of those gath­ered would still be why.

“As we sit and we won­der why, why, why ... we won­der about the in­hu­man­i­ty of man to­wards man. We won­der about the cru­el­ty which is tak­ing over the hearts of peo­ple…We won­der at the lack of fel­low feel­ing, we won­der, we won­der.”

He said the Quin­teros’ killers will even­tu­al­ly an­swer to God.

Rather than mourn, he told the con­gre­ga­tion they should pray for the de­part­ed souls and for God to have “mer­cy on us all.” He said be­reaved rel­a­tives could take so­lace know­ing that God was with them in times of grief, sor­row and chal­lenge.

Re­mem­ber­ing his un­cle as a gen­tle­man with a gen­tle soul, Kabir Singh said Quin­tero worked Sun­day to Sun­day, al­ways had a warm smile, was full of love and al­ways put his fam­i­ly first. He re­called that a val­ued les­son from him was “his con­tent­ment and pos­i­tiv­i­ty to what­ev­er sit­u­a­tion.”

Cindy Ling said her aunt, Gar­cia-Quin­tero, was a pray­ing per­son and each time she sat in a car she would say a prayer.

“It was nev­er a day she will not say her prayers,” Ling said, not­ing the fact that her aunt is in the hands of God might bring some com­fort to those griev­ing her loss.

“She was a cheer­ful, fun lov­ing la­dy who was full of life, feisty and fun­ny.”

How­ev­er, Ling said her aunt’s great­est pas­sion was her hus­band and two daugh­ters. She de­scribed her cousin Marisol as a very qui­et, in­ter­est­ing and amaz­ing per­son. A pri­vate cre­ma­tion was held af­ter the ser­vice.

The bod­ies of Quin­tero, 52, a con­trac­tor, Gar­cia-Quin­tero, 61 and Marisol, 33, were found in their pick-up van along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way on a bridge near Ste Madeleine around 7 am on Mon­day. There were gun­shot wounds to their heads and faces and bul­let holes in both wind­screens and a rear win­dow. It is be­lieved they were re­turn­ing home from Movi­eTowne when they were at­tacked.