SASKATOON - Heartsick relatives, friends and neighbours gathered by the hundreds in the small town of St. Brieux, Sask., on Wednesday for the last in a series of funerals for a mother and five little girls who died in an unexplained highway accident last week.

The sight of so many local kids weeping at the services for Charlene Bahan, her daughters Aspyn and Madison, and playmates Jasmine Coquet, Mikayla Piatt and Meara Hunt, has been nearly unbearable for people in the area, where virtually everyone feels some connection to them, said a local woman whose younger sisters were friends with the girls.

"It's the last one, so I think people are feeling a sense of relief," Ashley Major said after Hunt's funeral concluded.

"But with the last one also comes the reality that this is exactly what's happened and we have to deal with it now."

For the fourth time this week, overflow crowds packed the Roman Catholic Church in St. Brieux, a town about 180 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.

Upholding a family tradition at the church, Major was part of the choir during the service.

"We were all trying to sing and cry at the same time. It was rough," she said.

The St. Brieux town office was closed for business Wednesday while a key staff member stayed home with a grieving child, and many local businesses closed their doors during the funeral services, said an exhausted Mayor Pauline Boyer.

People in the town are hoping for a break from the media spotlight that has been turned on them since news of the crash made national headlines, Boyer said.

Bahan was driving the girls, aged eight to 10, home from a birthday party when their SUV went into a ditch on the afternoon of Aug. 14. The SUV continued over an embankment and crossed a field before plunging into a water-filled dugout and overturning with all six people trapped inside.

Bahan and three of the girls were later pronounced dead in hospital, while two other girls clung to life until the next day.

RCMP spokeswoman, Sgt. Tammy Patterson, said investigators have interviewed several witnesses, taken statements and gathered physical evidence from the scene and the vehicle, but the search for an explanation for the crash continues.

"The mechanical examination of the vehicle is complicated by the fact that the vehicle was submerged, and this will delay the work of the collision reconstructionist," she said.

Major and the local Knights of Columbus chapter are preparing to order thousands of white rubber memorial bracelets by next week, as reminders of Bahan and the girls. Since she started a support group on the Facebook networking website soon after the tragedy, she has been flooded with requests for them, including offers from businesses all over the province willing to help with distribution, she said.

The group's web page is also full of postings from people eager to help organize a more permanent memorial, such as a statue or group of benches at a local park.

"It's been huge, there's such a response," Major said of the park memorial idea.

"We don't want to start too soon, because the families need their time to grieve, (but) I think as the months move on it's definitely going to happen."