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 his wife and Elisabeth’s 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.”
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 Athens Games. 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 Chinese investigation. But he said it happened “quite quickly” and that it appeared to be unprovoked.
McCutcheon said doctors from the U.S. Embassy, the White House and the U.S. Olympic Committee have monitored Barbara Bachman’s condition, which was upgraded Monday from critical to serious.
