Randal Quan stood strong as he took to the podium on Sunday to a standing-room only crowd gathered at a memorial service for his daughter and her fiancé, the first people killed by an ex-LAPD officer bent on revenge.
Quan said there is no rhyme or reason as to the senseless death of his daughter, Monica, 28, and Keith Lawrence, 27, who were planning on getting married later this year.
“It is not for me or anyone else to question why God has done what he has done,” Quan said at a service in the gym at Concordia University, the location where the couple went to school and fell in love.
Some 1,700 attended the service with an additional 600 people in an overflow room to watch the memorial on TV screens.
They shared a love for basketball.
Lawrence was a basketball player at the college. Monica Quan was an assistant basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton.
On a wall in the locker room at Concordia is a quote from Lawrence that his teammates draw inspiration from.
“Don’t take the game for granted. Enjoy every practice. Go as hard as you can, because you never know which play might be your last.”
Outside the service, a line of uniformed Irvine police officers stood at attention while an American flag hanging from a fire ladder truck blew overhead.
Randal Quan reminisced about the couple's courtship, saying his daughter teased her retired LAPD captain father not to check Lawrence's background.
He referred to his daughter as “ninue,” which means “little girl” in Chinese.
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He said he felt safer knowing Lawrence was with Monica because Lawrence was also a USC campus police officer.
They had already had chosen their bridal party for their scheduled December wedding.
Instead, they were shot in an Irvine condo parking structure on Feb. 3. Irvine police identified the killer as Dorner.
Dorner killed four people while leading authorities on an 11-day manhunt. He died when he shot himself while he was surrounded by police as he was holed up in a mountain cabin.
In an online manifesto police attribute to Dorner, the former officer threatened several of his former LAPD colleagues and their family members over his 2008 firing.