Minister leads Sunday service for relatives slain in California shooting

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (AP) -- A minister who lost five relatives in a deadly shooting led a nearly two-hour Sunday service in their honor.

Minister Eddie Harper, whose mother, sister, two nephews and niece were slain Tuesday, brought congregants to their feet as they clapped, prayed and sang at the tiny Church of Christ.

"It's good to be home and to see friends and relatives and even under the circumstances, we still rejoice." the Winter Haven, Fla., minister said. "We believe they're in a better place. We miss them dearly ... but we just trust that they are resting. I know whatever I'm going through, God is preparing us for something better."

Absent from the service -- as he was from a memorial Friday night -- was Vincent Brothers, 41, an elementary school vice principal who is the only suspect in the shooting deaths of his estranged wife, three children and mother-in-law.

Brothers was seen leaving his apartment Sunday morning, trailed by several undercover police officers.

A funeral is scheduled for Wednesday for the victims -- Brothers' wife, Joanie Harper, 39; their children, Marques Harper, 4, Lyndsey Harper, 23 months, and Marshall Harper, 1Y months; and Harper's mother, 70-year-old Earnestine Harper.

Brothers turned himself in to authorities Wednesday in North Carolina, where his mother lives, but was released hours later because Bakersfield police said they lacked enough evidence to seek a formal arrest warrant.

Bakersfield police have said Brothers is considered the only "potential suspect" in slayings, but that police are investigating whether anyone else may have had a motive for the killings.

At Sunday's service, friends praised Earnestine Harper, a community activist and churchgoer, and her daughter, one of the area's few female basketball referees in a high school league.

"She was a strong woman. She was an active woman," Minister Wesley Crawford Muhammad, a longtime friend, said of the elder Harper. "We're talking about an angel on Earth."

High school league referee Mike Patton said officials would probably create a commemorative patch in Joanie Harper's name to be worn on all referee uniforms.

"If I had to pick any person I knew who had no enemies, that everyone cared for, that didn't see black or white, that's Joanie Harper," he said.