As about 2,000 people packed the pews yesterday at a slain young girl's funeral, a priest urged the mourners at St. Matthew's Catholic Church in North Baltimore to rise up in outrage against the latest horrific act of city violence.
"What kind of world do we live in when the greatest evil can attack the most innocent?" the Rev. Joseph L. Muth, Jr., said in an impassioned homily that brought some to their feet and others to tears as they paid their last respects to Marciana Monyai Ringo.
The 8-year-old pupil at Northwood Elementary School was kidnapped Dec. 3 and killed. Jamal Abeokuto, 22, her mother's boyfriend, has been charged in the case and remains at large.
"It is hard work to re-create a city and rebuild neighborhoods, but that's our job," Muth said.
Marciana "is lost to us as a city. ... This bright and precious child was taken in the midst of our troubled city. She was our daughter, too, in some way."
Edward English, principal of Northwood Elementary, said Marciana had touched the lives of others, after he delivered a brief eulogy. "That smile would make you melt," he said.
Her mother, Milagro White, listened, wept and leaned on family members for support.
Marciana's family - her brother and sister, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents - accepted embraces and condolences from the throng as hundreds passed by the casket to look at her. In death, Marciana looked the picture of childhood, dressed in white and surrounded by toys and teddy bears.
As they left the church yesterday, three Baltimore city homicide detectives working the case said that it is one of the saddest they have ever seen.
City investigators are working with authorities from the FBI and Harford County, where Marciana's body was found last week in a wooded area. For many at the funeral, the bleak winter day was even crueler because Abeokuto has not been found. Detective Kevin M. Hagan said, "We're here today to show them we haven't given up, as a show of force. ... This is an all-out hunt."
Investigators said the manhunt for Abeokuto will be featured on Fox Network's America's Most Wanted tonight.
Inside the church, prayers and such familiar melodies as "Amazing Grace" filled the air and gave a measure of comfort to some who said their sorrow was beyond words. An honor guard from the state Division of Pretrial Detention and Services stood solemnly at the main door as a show of solidarity for their colleague and the victim's grandfather, Capt. Gerald A. White.
Dennis Minor played the piano as his wife, Yvonne, conducted a children's chorus from Northwood.
He said the deaths this month of Marciana and Ciara Jobes, 15, whose emaciated body was found in a bare room in her guardian's apartment, brought to mind the biblical story of King Herod ordering the deaths of male children.
"For some reason, children are slain here and across the country, with snatching and all manner of harm and dismay," Minor said.
Letters of sympathy from Cardinal William H. Keeler and Mayor Martin O'Malley were read aloud during the service.
O'Malley's letter echoed the outrage expressed by Muth. "This is not the way it's supposed to be," he said about a parent burying a child. "It's part of God's plan in a way we don't understand."
In a similar vein, Muth cautioned against seeking revenge. "We can't let thoughts of revenge eat us up," he said.
A child's clear voice spoke at the end. A playmate of Marciana's, Alexis Simpson, 7, told the assembly that the letters in her friend's name each stood for something to her. The I, she said, "is for intelligent - yes, that's what she is." The A's in "Marciana," she said, stood for two angels and "awesome."
Beyond Marciana's immediate circle of friends and relatives, her death stirred the hearts of strangers, who also filed into the church yesterday. Kyra Jennings, 20, a University of Maryland, Baltimore County student, said she didn't know the bereaved family. When asked what brought her there, she said: "My heart."