SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A police helicopter circled overhead Sunday as more than 5,000 members of the city's Eastern European community packed a church for the funeral of six members of a Ukrainian immigrant family slain last week.
More than 20 Sacramento County sheriff's deputies, many of them in plainclothes, stood watch for fear the relative believed responsible for the killings might surface at the service. The funerals concluded without violence.
Nikolay Soltys, 27, is suspected of slashing the throats of his pregnant wife, 3-year-old son, aunt, uncle and two young cousins during a rampage that spanned several hours on Aug. 20.
"Today is the day of our trouble, the day of our sorrow that is inexpressible," the Rev. Vladimir Lashchuk said in Russian at Bethany Slavic Missionary Church. "No one thought their lives would end so quickly."
Anatolly Nakonchay, the oldest of Soltys' wife's four brothers, said there were periods of "disquiet and domestic unrest" between the couple.
"There were episodes where I and my brothers had to physically intervene," Nakonchay said in an interview at the church.
When his sister, Lyubov, decided to leave Ukraine to join Soltys in the United States, "There were many who asked her not to go. Her answer was 'I want my son Sergey to have a father,' " Nakonchay said.
Soltys tops the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, and a $70,000 reward was offered for his arrest. "America's Most Wanted" on Fox carried the case Saturday night, generating more than 100 tips. Still more tips flowed into a Sacramento command center on four telephone hotlines, one of them set aside for people speaking Ukrainian and Russian.
Investigators said Soltys most likely remains in the Sacramento area, and at least a dozen of Soltys' relatives were under police protection in the area.
However, the search expanded last week to Russian-Ukrainian communities in San Francisco and Oregon, and police were paying special attention to Seattle; Charlotte, N.C.; and Binghamton, N.Y., where Soltys once lived or had family ties.
"He could be gone, he could be here, we just don't know," said Sheriff's Lt. Larry Saunders.
Sunday's two-hour funeral, in Russian with English translation, brought together a Russian-Ukrainian immigrant community that has grown to as many as 75,000 people.
Five white caskets stood open at the front of the church, with a smaller white casket for Soltys' son, Sergey.