ST. CROIX — At first glance, the scene at the Bethel Seventh Day Adventist Church in Williams Delight appeared par for the course as funerals go, with family, friends and well-wishers making their way to the pews waiting for the service to begin.<\/p>\n
But everything changed when three hearses of the Divine Funeral Home, escorted by police, brought the bodies of Lyana Serieux, along with her two sons, Jordan and Jeremiah Serieux to the church and carried them to the front of the altar. Instantly, the gravity of the moment rushed back the forefront of attendees’ minds, and the sadness and pain that has swept Ms. Serieux’s family became audible as they began mourning with loud, painful screams of grief.<\/p>\n
Ms. Serieux was 24 years old when she was brutally murdered during the last weekend of July. Her body was found<\/span><\/a> in the cistern of an abandoned building behind Mutual Homes in Grove. Her sons, ages 5 and 10, were also killed and disposed of on the south shore<\/span><\/a> near the Ha’Penny Beach area. The sad occurrence has been described as the worst crime to ever occur in the U.S. Virgin Islands, especially since two innocent children with their entire lives ahead of them were taken. Their mother was described as a determined young woman who graduated from college with a bachelors of arts in psychology and a minor in political science, and was projected to start her master’s degree in psychology this fall. She did all this even after having a child at very young age, beating the odds.<\/p>\n Hosted by Maxine Hart<\/span><\/a> along with Malik Stridiron<\/span><\/a>, community activists who were heavily involved in assisting Ms. Serieux’s family from the onset of the tragedy, the funeral was marked by unfiltered grief as those close to Ms. Serieux and her boys delivered words of tribute.<\/p>\n
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