VB coach talks about tragedy

BEIJING – In a hospital here, a family recovers. This is not simple because the details of the murder that shocked the Olympics are still too raw, too awful to describe in detail. But on Monday, Elisabeth Bachman McCutcheon was able to talk to her husband Hugh about the killing of her father, which she witnessed. And that alone was a small step forward. On this day that was progress enough.

“Clearly, Elisabeth is a victim in this too,” U.S. men’s volleyball Coach Hugh McCutcheon said Monday night of the attack at the Drum Tower, a local landmark, that killed Todd Bachman and seriously injured her mother Barbara. “She physically is unscathed but having to deal with this incident has been hard for her. She’s shown incredible strength and over the last couple of days we’ve been able to talk our way through it.”

Still visibly shaken by the murder of his father-in-law, McCutcheon sat in a meeting room at a hotel here, looking drawn and sad but still managed to speak warmly about his wife’s family, especially Todd Bachman, who he called “a man of great personal integrity.”

“He stood for things and lived them,” McCutcheon said.

Todd and Barbara Bachman had come to the Olympics on a tour package and brought along their daughter who was a member of the U.S. women’s volleyball team at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. The trio’s trip to the Drum Tower was one of the excursions provided by the tour company.

McCutcheon, who has remained by his family’s side, declined to give details of the attack because of the impending Chinese investigation. But he said it happened “quite quickly” and that it appeared to be unprovoked. Since Barbara McCutcheon has barely been able to communicate, there are details still unknown.

McCutcheon said doctors from the U.S. Embassy, the White House and USOC have monitored Barbara Bachman’s condition, which was upgraded on Monday from critical to serious, as has a doctor provided by Olympic sponsor Johnson & Johnson. Still, there is no indication about how long she will be in the hospital or how likely she is to recover.

As a result, he has not made a decision about returning to his team, saying: “We haven’t closed that door yet.”