EMPORIA, Va. (WTVR) -- Friends, family and students from Virginia College honored the life of the beloved teacher found shot inside her burned down Chester home last week.
More than 400 people packed into a church in the small town to pay tribute to Dr. Madalyn Carey on Sunday afternoon.
Many reminisced about Carey's vibrant personality and the love and compassion she showed for others. Some said their professor could light up a room just by offering sweet words and a smile.
Carey's father, the pastor at Greater Shiloh Baptist Church, offered a eulogy of forgiveness at his daughter's celebration of life. He had a candid conversation with the congregation.
"I'm not angry at nobody," James Alfred Carey said. "The gentleman who took my daughter's life, she was trying to help him,"
Carey said his daughter was always trying to assist people who were "down and out" – and that Lloyd Warren Jr. was her latest rescue.
"She told my wife, 'I think he's at the door,' and she said, 'Do you want me to come over?'" Carey said. "She said, 'No, Mom, I got this.'"
Carey was found dead inside the charred debris of her rental home off Duxton Drive in Chester on Tuesday.
Police said she was shot to death by Lloyd Edward Warren Jr., a man that lived with her.
Deputies found Warren dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a rural Cumberland County cemetery Thursday.
Her family is still coming to grips with the unexpected loss.
"You can see the love she's shown everybody," Cathie Turner, Carey's cousin, said. "Just as her brother was just saying, she's everywhere. You can see that right here today [and] she is everywhere because she had a mission and served it."
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