The 15-year-old girl Texas girl who survived an attack in which her parents and four younger siblings were killed wiped away tears and quoted the wise man from the "Harry Potter" series during a public memorial for her family Saturday.
"Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light," Cassidy Stay said, citing Dumbledore of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," CNN reported.
Cassidy Stay, speaks during a memorial service for the Stay family at Lemm Elementary School on Saturday, July 12, 2014, in Spring, Texas. (Image source: AP/Conroe Courier, Michael Minasi)
"I know that my mom, dad, Brian, Emily, Becca and Zach are in a much better place, and that I will be able to see them again one day," Stay added during the gathering by an elementary school in her hometown of Spring outside Houston.
Thanking first responders, doctors and nurses who helped her, Stay said, "I am feeling a lot better and am on a very straightforward path to a full recovery."
Cassidy Stay, the lone survivor of a family massacre in Texas, lets a balloon go during a community memorial at Lemm Elementary School on Saturday, July 12, 2014, in Spring, Texas. (Image source: AP/Houston Chronicle, Brett Coomer)
Stay was released from a hospital Friday — two days after the attack in which her skull was fractured by a bullet graze.
Authorities said her aunt's ex-husband, Ronald Lee Haskell, stormed into the family's home Wednesday and fatally shot her parents and four siblings, who ranged in age from 4 to 13 years old. They say Stay survived by playing dead and called police to warn that Haskell intended to go to her grandparents' house next.
Haskell is in a Texas jail; he appeared before a judge Friday and collapsed as the six capital murder charges against him were read aloud.
Two law enforcement officials held Haskell for 20 about seconds before sitting him on the floor. They then put him in a desk chair and wheeled him out of the courtroom.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
