Tresa Baldas

Detroit Free Press

For the grief-stricken mother, the scene was too much to bear.

Four caskets were lined up, her beautiful children inside.

Koi was in a purple dress — her favorite color. Kaleigh wore a ruffly pink dress. Kara, her honor-student daughter with the contagious smile, was in a pearly white casket; her artistic son, Chadney, whose artwork was featured in GM's world headquarters, was in a gold casket.

For Faith Whitney, who had already survived the unimaginable horror that brought her to this place — her husband is accused of killing the four children, two in front of her — the will to speak had been drowned out by pain and sorrow. So she gave a letter to the pastor, who read her good-byes.

"My dear babies," the mother wrote, "I loved you all."

In a final farewell filled with tears, music, flowers and a fiery Texas pastor who preached love over evil, an estimated 1,200 people filled the pews at Detroit First Church of the Nazarene in Farmington Hills to honor four children whose lives were tragically cut short in a horrific case of domestic violence that shattered a family, stunned a community and left a mother to grieve an unfathomable loss.

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Chadney Allen, 19, and Kara Allen, 17, were shot to death in their Dearborn Heights home on Sept. 21 by their stepfather, Gregory Green, who tied up their mother and forced her to witness the killings, police have said.

That same night, Green allegedly killed his own two children, Koi Green, 5, and Kaleigh Green, 4, by poisoning them with carbon monoxide.

At the funeral, as the mourners filed past the caskets, the mother's cries drowned out the spiritual music. Her wails came and went. When she cried, the crowd cried. Loved ones held her up as she struggled to deal with her loss.

"My little big man, you're so strong," the mother wrote in her letter to her children. She talked about how one daughter was a "go-getter," how "Princess Koi" loved wearing her hair down, how another daughter was "glued to my hip." And how she encouraged each of them "to be a leader and not a follower."

People young and old wept in the crowd during the two-hour funeral. Mothers and grandmothers shook their heads in disbelief. Teens sobbed. A boy in a white T-shirt kept wiping away his tears as he looked over the balcony down at the caskets. "She was my tutor," the boy, 15-year-old Jalen Shamley, said of Kara. "She was so nice and sweet."

The service included speeches from family members, friends, high school students and even strangers who showed up to offer the family support.

Among those who spoke was Chadney Allen Sr, the father of the two teens who were killed.

"This is more overwhelming than I could ever imagine. ... They were going to be powerful individuals," Allen said of his children. "But I know they're in a better place. They're not feeling any pain, or any sorrow anymore."

Texas pastor Ron Shepherd, a charismatic preacher who fired up the crowd in an impassioned speech denouncing the devil and praising God, took the teen victims' father in his arms and consoled him.

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"Look at me!" he hollered to the father in front of his daughter's white casket. "Look at me. You did nothing wrong! Lift up your head, brother. God's about to use you."

Shepherd, who was handpicked by the family to deliver the eulogy, turned the atmosphere in the church from somber to celebratory by delivering an impassioned speech that focused on God, forgiveness and good beating evil. But he got mad when he did it, saying he's "tired of rituals" and people saying things like ""God called your angels home."

"I'm tired of this crap ... That's a lie!," Shepherd told the crowd. "Murder is not of God. Who do y'all get that crap from? Satan and his dark angels did this!"

The crowd erupted in cheers and amens.

The preacher also urged the family and community to do the seemingly unthinkable: Forgive the killer.

"You've got to release him," Shepherd said of the accused. "If Jesus could do it ... why can't you? Yeah, it hurts, but being bitter isn't going to help nothing."

The killings happened on Sept. 21, about a month after Gregory Green's wife, Faith, filed for divorce. Gregory Green, who previously served 16 years in prison for stabbing his pregnant wife to death in 1991, has been charged with first-degree murder in the children's deaths.

At the funeral today, relatives and friends did their best to let the world know who these four children were, and why they meant so much.

These are the lives that were taken too soon.

Kara was an honor student with a promising future at the new Southfield High School for the Arts and Technology. She was a varsity football cheerleader, a staff writer for the school newspaper, a member of the National Honor Society and manager of the varsity football team. Kara was taking honors and advanced placement classes in preparation for college.

She dreamed of attending Salem College in North Carolina and becoming an obstetrician, the paper wrote. Her favorite color was pink. And she was optimistic.

"Keep your head high, keep your chin up, and keep smiling because life is a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about," Kara wrote in a 2014 Facebook post, which included a photo of herself, smiling with the sunlight beaming over her shoulder.

She also was active in the community and volunteered to feed homeless people.

The younger Chadney J. Allen was a 2015 graduate of Southfield High School. As a student, he enjoyed art and excelled in a program that allowed him to have his work exhibited at the GM building in downtown Detroit. He received a digital media arts certification from Specs Howard.

Chadney, who worked part time at KFC, enjoyed anime, paintball, video games and making mini movies in his spare time.

Koi, 6, was a first-grader at St. Sebastian Catholic School. She liked her school and teachers and was learning Spanish.

Koi liked to dress up in pretty outfits and was a cheerleader and ballerina.

She loved pizza, drawing, the color purple and taking trips.

Kaleigh, 4, was a preschooler at St. Sebastian. Her favorite things were singing, cheering, ballet dancing, eating macaroni and cheese and playing outside.

A video that was played at the funeral captured many of these details. Mourners saw the smiles, the dance recitals, the family vacations, the baby pictures. Their lives made sense, their deaths did not.

"Remember them before all of this," a cousin told the mourners. "They were beautiful people."

Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com