Priest asks mourners to pray for teenage suspect

Police say boy, 14, shot mother, brother

Jacob Remaley was focused and attentive during Sunday Mass and youth ministry at St. Bruno Parish. When the Rev. Larry Manchas preached, he said, the 14-year-old listened attentively, questioning the tenets of his faith, as kids sometimes do.

Father Manchas said he “admired” the teen and remembered him as being deeply religious. But now Jacob stands accused of killing his mother and brother last week in Hempfield. On Monday, Father Manchas urged mourners to include Jacob in their prayers.

“I just feel very, very bad for him, and I asked the congregation not to demonize him,” he said after presiding over the funerals Monday for Dana and Caleb Remaley. “There are more questions than answers, and we may not know all the answers, but we just have to allow God to heal.”

The motive for the slayings appears to be related to strife at home, Westmoreland County District Attorney John Peck said Monday. Jacob, a student at Hempfield Area High School, is charged with taking a handgun from atop the family’s refrigerator and shooting his 46-year-old mother and 8-year-old brother in the head as they slept Wednesday morning. Police said he told them that if his father, David, had been home, he’d have shot him, too.

“He was unhappy with his parents,” Mr. Peck said the teen told police, though he apparently didn’t say that of his brother. Wayne P. McGrew, the teen’s public defender, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The family requested no media coverage at the funerals. But in an interview later Monday, Father Manchas said he told the more

than 160 parishioners packed into St. Martin Church in New Derry — which Ms. Remaley attended growing up — that “God has big shoulders” and won’t abandon them if their faith is strained as they struggle to understand the crime.

“My message was basically the fact that even in a very difficult time like this, not all is lost, but that God ... will heal,” he said. “Even though times will be rough — I’m not going to minimize that — there is a hope that can bring something good.”

Father Manchas said he also was heartened by those who have turned out to support Mr. Remaley and pay their respects to his wife and son. Ms. Remaley was a personal care assistant at West Hempfield Middle School who was remembered by her mother-in-law last week as a devoted mother and a good cook and hostess, who also was strict and organized. Caleb was a third-grade student at Stanwood Elementary School.

“It was a difficult time,” Father Manchas said of Monday’s service, “but I think there was a spirit of harmony, a spirit of love.”