A woman quietly walked into an Odessa funeral home following a visitation service Friday and stole a wedding ring from a dead woman lying in a casket, a relative said Saturday. 
 
 Odessa police had little information about the theft, but Vel McKee, daughter of Lois Hicks, said a woman she never saw before walked in Friday to the Sunset Funeral Home, 6801 E. Business 20, and yanked the ring off her mother’s left hand, tearing off part of the skin from the woman's finger and took off with the jewelry. 
 
 It was placed on Hick's hand to symbolize her love and devotion to her husband, Gayle, who died three years ago, McKee said. The theft occurred a day after Lois Hicks died. She was 88, McKee said. 
 
 “I can’t believe someone would be that low,” McKee said Saturday. McKee and other family members saw the video surveillance of the thief jerking on Hick’s hand, she said. 
 
 “It makes me sick to my stomach,” McKee said. “Horrible. I hope they catch her.” 
 
 Bill Vallie, general manager of the funeral home said the video surveillance showed the unidentified woman parking her car, getting out of it and entering the building. 
 
 McKee and Hicks’ other loved ones had left the funeral home shortly before the woman showed up at about 5:27 p.m. Friday. The woman walked in asking where the restroom was but went into the room where the casket was instead, Vallie said. 
 
 “You can’t restrict anyone,” he said. 
 
 Several shots of the vehicle’s license plate from the video recording can be enhanced for close ups; Hicks’ family is going to press charges, Vallie said. 
 
 Jewelry theft from the dead at funeral homes is nothing new, Vallie said. But nothing prepared him for the brazen nature of Friday’s incident. 
 
 “This is the first time this has happened” at the Odessa funeral home since it has been in operation in 1999, said Vallie, who worked in the funeral home industry for the past 40 years. “It never happened where I was at.” 
 
 McKee said she and her sister, Brenda Vaughan, spent part of their Friday putting on makeup and brushing the hair of their deceased mother. Then one of funeral directors later called McKee up asking if either she or Brenda would want to touch up her makeup. That’s when McKee spotted the missing ring, she said. 
 
 “We had only been gone for 15 minutes,” McKee said. “It’s just heartbreaking.” 
 
 The sisters confirmed that a video recording was taken of the theft which alleviated some of their concerns, but McKee said she was stunned that such a crime to happen to someone so defenseless. 
 
 “It made me sick,” McKee said of the theft. “We just never dreamed that something like this would happen. Not in a million years.” 
 
 Anyone with information about the woman or her whereabouts can call the Odessa Police Department at 335-5784 or Odessa Crime Stoppers at 333-8477. ||||| UPDATE: 
 
 Odessa Police have just released higher quality video of the suspect wanted in reference to a theft of a deceased person that happened at Sunset Memorial Gardens & Funeral Home. 
 
 _ 
 
 UPDATE: 
 
 The family has given CBS 7 News a photo of the suspects vehicle. 
 
 Anyone with information in reference to this incident is encouraged to contact the Odessa Police Department or Odessa Crime Stoppers at 432-333-TIPS. 
 
 UPDATE: 
 
 Odessa Police responded to Sunset Memorial Gardens & Funeral Home located 6801 East Highway 80 in reference to a theft of a deceased person. 
 
 The investigation revealed that on April 8th an unknown female stole a ring off a deceased person and fled the scene in a red or maroon 4-door Saturn. The suspect is described as a heavy-set white female wearing a brown long sleeve sweater, black sweat pants and black sandals. 
 
 This is currently being investigated as a State Jail Felony. No arrests have been made and the investigation continues. 
 
 Anyone with information in reference to this incident is encouraged to contact the Odessa Police Department or Odessa Crime Stoppers at 432-333-TIPS. 
 
 _ 
 
 An Odessa woman wants to find a thief after her mother's wedding ring was taken as she lay in a funeral home. 
 
 Take a look at this video: The woman you see here allegedly took the ring from the mother's body at the Sunset Funeral Home in Odessa. 
 
 The family is still grieving the woman's death, and is asking anyone with information about the theft to come forward. 
 
 If you have any information, you can call Odessa Crimestoppers at 432-333-TIPS. ||||| The Rev. Michael Briese, a priest in the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. (Archdiocese of Washington) 
 
 A D.C.-area Catholic priest was placed on leave Tuesday after exploding at mourners waiting in a sanctuary for a funeral, reportedly telling them to “get the hell out of my church.” Video shows the argument going on feet away from an open casket holding the deceased woman. 
 
 The disturbing scene last Wednesday played out on social media after mourners recorded the Rev. Michael Briese, who is in his 60s, angrily speaking with people at St. Mary’s Church in Charlotte Hall. In a letter Thursday to the local newspaper, the Maryland Independent, Briese said his anger “spilled out in a torrent” after he saw a “sacred chalice” used in the Mass damaged by a funeral guest. 
 
 After the blowup between Briese and mourners standing beside the casket of Agnes Hicks, dozens of people streamed out of the sanctuary with the casket into a parking lot, where police cars called by Briese were arriving, according to a video report by Fox 5-WTTG-DC. 
 
 The details of exactly what happened during the altercation weren’t immediately clear, but church officials and Briese said in statements that nothing justified his reaction, and they apologized. 
 
 “What occurred at Saint Mary’s Parish this morning does not reflect the Catholic Church’s fundamental calling to respect and uplift the God-given dignity of every person,” wrote the Rev. Michael W. Fisher, who was recently installed as auxiliary bishop for ministerial leadership of the Archdiocese of Washington, which covers the District and the nearby Maryland suburbs and exurbs. “I want to reach out to you first to offer my prayers for your loved one that God will grant her a place in his kingdom of eternal light and love, and condolences to your family. On days such as today, our response should always be one of compassion and sympathy for the bereaved as well as prayers for the deceased. I reiterate and reinforce the sincere apology you and your family received” earlier. 
 
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 Briese was placed on administrative leave while the archdiocese investigates what it called in Fisher’s note Wednesday a “serious misunderstanding.” 
 
 Someone called 911 and reported that property was being destroyed and that a possible fight was unfolding, said Charles County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Diane Richardson. When officers arrived, there were 200 to 250 people in and around the parking lot. Some “were visibly upset. . . . Obviously something happened, but it wasn’t clear what it was.” 
 
 Richardson said police escorted the group and the casket to the county line. There was no evidence of property damage, except for the chalice, which she said appeared to have been knocked over accidentally. 
 
 Hicks’s children spoke angrily of their treatment at the parish where she was baptized and where, they said, she always wished to be buried. 
 
 Shanice Chisley, Hicks’s daughter, told Fox 5 that “all hell broke loose” when the chalice was knocked over. 
 
 “He literally got on the mic and said, ‘There will be no funeral, no Mass, no repast [funeral reception], everyone get the hell out of my church.’ He was disrespectful,” Chisley said of Briese. “He disrespected our family, he disrespected my mother.” 
 
 Renetta Baker, also interviewed by Fox 5 and identified as a daughter of Hicks, said Briese was unholy. 
 
 “You’re not a preacher. You’re not a pastor, you’re not a father of the Lord. You’re none of that. You’re the devil.” 
 
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 According to Fisher’s letter, another priest of the archdiocese, the Rev. Scott Woods, completed the service at a nearby funeral home. 
 
 Many of the funeral attendees were black, and a pallbearer reportedly said Briese — who is white — denied, unprompted, that he was motivated by racism. Hicks was African American. 
 
 “After everyone cleared out, it was just the pallbearers, he tried to explain it that he wasn’t a racist,” Theo Johnson, a pallbearer and cousin of Hicks, told the Enterprise, a newspaper covering the rural area southeast of Washington. “He said he put plaques on graves out there [in the cemetery], black and white people, he said he feeds the homeless. Nobody said anything about race. We were just saying he was being disrespectful, that this could have been handled after the funeral, and he said, ‘Forget it, just get that thing — [indicating the casket] — out of here.'” 
 
 Briese declined to comment Tuesday but wrote to the local newspaper that he feared that those minutes in the church would erase a lifetime of public service. 
 
 “Some might dismiss these words, given the tenor of the words I uttered before the funeral that was to take place on Wednesday. That is a just part of the consequence I will bear for my behavior. Like all human beings, I, too, am broken in nature, make mistakes and, yes, I fail,” he wrote. “My recent actions and words were not borne of kindness, but a failure of my vow to serve the Lord and those entrusted to my care as a person and as priest. I am profoundly sorry for my words and actions. I pray for all in this community every day, and I can only ask that you pray for me, but also for other priests and ministers, and all who seek to serve those who suffer and struggle as we strive to build up the kingdom of God.” 
 
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 Archdiocese spokeswoman Chieko Noguchi said Briese had been working with the family in the days leading up to the funeral to defray the burial costs. 
 
 A 2009 profile of Briese from the Catholic Standard said he grew up around Silver Spring and before becoming a priest he took into his home local homeless people, who he also fed, and had worked trying to help elderly and disabled people find housing. 
 
 “We grew up respecting other people. That’s a big lesson, to make room for everybody,” he said in the profile. “It’s in me to reach out to those in need, I’ve been doing that all my life.”
– A Texas woman was caught on surveillance video stealing a wedding ring off the finger of a dead woman Friday, the Odessa American reports. The body of Lois Hicks, 88, was in an open casket at Odessa's Sunset Funeral Home. The woman's family had just left the funeral home after a visitation service when a stranger parked outside, came in, and asked to use the restroom. Instead, the funeral home's manager says, she walked into the room with Hicks' coffin, grabbed the ring off her finger, and left. Hicks' daughter says some of her mother's skin was actually torn off during the theft. "I can't believe someone would be that low," she says. The surveillance video captured the alleged thief's license plate, and the family is pressing charges. The incident is being investigated as a felony, KOSA reports. The suspect is described as a heavy-set white woman who was wearing a brown long-sleeved sweater, black sweat pants, and black sandals at the time; she drove off in a red or maroon four-door Saturn.