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Michele Bowe knows her former Chevy Chase neighbor Kelly Murray could defend her loved ones against everything but chance.

"As moms, we try to protect ourselves and our families as best we can," Bowe said, standing outside the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament on Monday evening with her daughter Cecilia. "And there are random acts."

Hundreds of mourners filed into the Washington, D.C. church near Chevy Chase Circle to remember the energy and vitality of the 40-year-old Murray and her 7-year-old daughter Sloane, who were killed Friday evening at about 7:20 p.m. when a tree branch dislodged by a thunderstorm fell on the minivan Murray was driving southbound on Connecticut Avenue near East West Highway, just minutes from her home.

Murray, a clinical psychologist who taught at Loyola University in Baltimore and a former Navy psychologist at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, and Sloane, a first-grader at the Most Blessed Sacrament's school, were pronounced dead at the scene by Montgomery County Fire and Rescue. Four of Murray's other children – Megan, 11, Maeve, 6, Quinn, 2, and Kieran, 10 months – were taken to Children's Hospital in the District with non-life threatening injuries, along with two of her children's friends. Another daughter, Jillian, 12, was at the family's home when the accident occurred.

Funeral services are scheduled for this morning at 10 a.m., according to church spokeswoman Susan Gibbs.

Murray was driving the children home from a swim team practice at the Chevy Chase Recreation Association when the accident occurred. Montgomery County Police spokeswoman Lucille Baur said the tree branch fell diagonally along the length of the car.

Capt. Oscar Garcia of Montgomery County Fire and Rescue said the accident that killed Murray and her daughter was the only serious incident resulting from Friday's storm that caused several tree branches to fall on house roofs and power lines.

"Throughout the county we were dealing with a lot of wires down, a lot of trees down," Garcia said.

Members of the Fire and Rescue squad that responded to the accident attended the Monday prayer service at Most Blessed Sacrament, where the crowd of mourners, many of them young children, lined the walls of the nave and overflowed into the church's entryway when room in the pews ran out.

Those in attendance recalled Murray's devotion to her family while still finding so many ways to help others, as her husband Sean and other family members looked on.

Recalling his former parishioners who were "so good, so active…so faithful," Monsignor John Enzler told the crowd, "It's fair to say, I think, that we do not understand, that we have asked ‘Why?' multiple times this weekend."

Jillian Murray recited a poem one of her friends had written in honor of her mother that read in part: "If you were sad, she would comfort you/ If you had problems, she would give you advice…If you left, she would miss you." There was a visible emotional reaction in the church.

She went on to say of her mother, "She was a huge role model and she was my hero. I want to be like her when I grow up."

Murray's sister, Tami Tuttle, recalled the various scrapes she got into with Kelly Murray when the two were children, saying at one point, "Only Kelly could make me laugh that hard."

After the service, Enzler recalled how, during the church's Christmas pageant last year, Murray offered her youngest daughter Kieran, then only a few months old, to serve as the newborn Christ child, and how during the pageant she handed Kieran to the eighth-grader who was playing Mary.

"Pretty special, again, to see the trust of a mom in an older child," Enzler said.

Bowe said Kelly Murray was "the most beautiful person to look at because her love and her warmth radiated," and that Murray was a dedicated mom "who still had time for everybody else."

Bowe's 7-year-old child Cecilia, who attended kindergarten at the church with Sloane Murray and was on the swim team with her, managed to say of her classmate, "She always had a big smile on her face," before breaking down in tears.

After the service when the crowd filed outside, those who had earlier written messages to Kelly and Sloane Murray on index cards attached them to pink balloons. At a signal, the children in the crowd released them, taking their fond remembrances and prayers into the evening sky.