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Brooklyn Tech Student and Family Killed in Murder-Suicide Mourned

By Ben Fractenberg | September 16, 2014 8:31am
  A service was held for Brian Lee and Lee Sung at the Central Funeral Home in Flushing Monday night, Sept. 15, 2014. 
Brian Lee, Lee Sung and Lee Joon Funeral
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FLUSHING — The 16-year-old Brooklyn Technical High School student who died alongside his mother and father in a murder-suicide last week was described as a "kind soul" by devastated relatives at a funeral for the family in Flushing Monday night.

More than 100 people packed into the Central Funeral Home on 41st Avenue to mourn Brian Lee, 16, his mother, Lee Sung, 54, and father Lee Joon, 55. Their caskets were surrounded by nearly a dozen multicolored floral arraignments.

“You were supposed to be the uncle to my children,” said Brian’s cousin, identified by funeral goers as Amy Jung, tears streaming down her face. “Life isn’t fair right now. It’s just not fair at all. I just hope all the people here know how much of a kind soul you were.”

Lee Joon slashed the throats of his wife and son before setting himself on fire in their Roosevelt Avenue apartment early in the morning on Sept. 9, police said. He left a rambling suicide note detailing his money problems, sources said.

The father, who had been injured in a 2011 car crash, was concerned that his deteriorating health could cause him to die before his wife and son, saddling them with debt, according to a spokesman for Flushing City Councilman Peter Koo.

Lee Sung had recently stopped attending weekly church services so she could work at a salon on Sundays to help support her household, the family's pastor said.

“She was very kind,” said Byeong Junso, 16, one of Brian's childhood friends who remembered Sung giving him rides when the two boys were in elementary school together. “She always asked me how I [was] feeling every day."

Classmates and religious leaders remembered Brian, who studied electromechanics at Brooklyn Tech, as a bright, sweet-natured young man.

“Brian was probably one of the genuinely nice people I met,” Joseph Park, 24, who led a youth group the teen attended at the New Creation Presbyterian Church, told DNAinfo New York last week. “He was always real about everything."