Grief, pain and hope: Spokane residents gather at the courthouse’s jury room for National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims

A lapel pin, a flameless LED candle and a box of tissues at the end of each row rested on or near every chair inside the Spokane County Courthouse’s Jury Room during a vigil on Thursday commemorating the National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims.

To the left of the speaker’s podium, hundreds of small tacks surrounded a memorial board displaying a toddler-sized red and black ribbon serving to memorialize victims of homicide. Each pin on the board next to the ribbon represented a life taken in Spokane County, dating back to 1961.

There were 969 tacks on the board.

Near the front of the crowd, Jessica Shuck’s arm wrapped tightly around her mother, Terri Smith , as sheriff chaplains, the county prosecutor, a superior court judge, Sheriff John Nowels and a member of the community affected by homicide shared their thoughts, prayers and hopes with the assembled crowd.

Shuck, the sister of the victim, and Smith, the mother, lost a loved one, Justin Daniel, in April 2024. Thursday would have been Daniel’s 42nd birthday.

The Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled that Daniel had been stabbed 48 times and shot three times in his Mead home. His ex-girlfriend and the mother of one of his children, Cynthia Khaleel, is his suspected killer. She’s being held without bail in the Spokane County Jail while awaiting trial for first-degree murder.

Daniel had a protective order against Khaleel solidified in December 2023 and was awarded full custody of his and Khaleel’s 3-year-old daughter in March 2024. Six years before Daniel’s death, Khaleel was acquitted of killing her adoptive 5-year-old nephew, Gary Blanton III. The boy died of a fractured skull that Khaleel said happened when the young child fell from a piece of furniture.

While Shuck and Smith wait for the trial to begin, the pair said they were touched by the testimonies of others who have gone through similar things in the aftermath of losing a loved one to homicide. Smith said she believes part of her son’s legacy will be to raise awareness to the fact that men can be victims of domestic violence too.

When asked how they’ve managed to find hope in the midst of all their grief, their answer was one grounded in faith.

“The First Thessalonians verse that (the chaplain) said, ‘We don’t grieve like the world grieves, because we have that hope that we will see him again,’ ” Smith said. “So all glory to God in this entire endeavor, in this whole process. If it wasn’t for our faith, I can’t imagine people that grieve without faith, without that hope.”

Senior Chaplain Garry Losey was one of the last speakers to address the crowd inside the jury room. He told them how his father disappeared for three weeks in April 1980. One Friday as Losey was on the phone with his mother, he heard a knock at the door. A captain from the local police force and another officer informed Losey that a shepherd had found his father’s body hidden in the hills of San Bernardino.

Losey, who was in graduate school at the time, welcomed a daughter into the world only months before his father’s death. Two women who were with the men that had taken Losey’s father’s van and kidnapped his dad before eventually killing him described during the trial how Losey’s dad begged his would-be killers to let him go. He wanted only to see his newborn granddaughter one last time.

“I’m going to tell you it’s not easy,” Losey said. “It is not easy to live with the loss. I could hardly preach Father’s Day sermons on Father’s Day… but I’ve had the hope that I will see my father again.”

Kandice Kambitsch is the sister of a homicide victim, Shannon Kambitsch-Ayers, who died of a gunshot wound to the head in 2022 in her Deer Park home. Kambitsch spoke to the crowd about her experiences dealing with grief, anger toward her sister’s killer and all the other myriad emotions that have blossomed since her sister was murdered. Her sister’s killer and husband of over eight years, Dean Ayers, was found guilty of second-degree murder in November 2024 and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Kambitsch described to the crowd how her sister loved all of her 17 grandchildren, three children and two stepchildren. She also explained how she collected $2 bills and sent them to her grandkids for every one of their birthdays. Kambitsch-Ayers loved the outdoors, four-wheeling, camping, huckleberry picking and singing karaoke, and was looking forward to being able to travel the world after retirement.

“Some days are harder, and some are easier than others,” Kambitsch said to the crowd. “But then a song, a smell, a sunset, children’s laughter, a dream, someone says something, anything, and it sparks a memory, and a wave of memories comes flooding back and tears rapidly fall. We will never get over it. We will never forget what you stole from us. We will never forget her.”

Robert Kinnune, the lead chaplain for the Spokane County Sheriff’s chaplaincy, said walking the journey of life with people, through great moments and painful ones, is what he loves the most about his job. He hopes attendees of Thursday’s event understand that the steps to healing take time and that a person should never beat themselves up because they aren’t where they think they should be along the journey.

While everyone who has lost a loved one to homicide is at a different point in the grieving process, for Shuck and Smith, Thursday’s event was a beautifully painful reminder of something more.

“That’s what we took from it,” Shuck said. “There is hope, and you’re not alone.”