Diagonal, Iowa ? Everybody who knew Levi Boothe, 11, agreed on one thing: He loved french fries.

In fact, when workers at the group home where he lived in Creston, Iowa, took him to McDonald’s, they made sure he had three french fries at all times: the one he was eating, and one in each hand.

“That’s what kept him happy,” said the Rev. Len Garrison, who presided over Boothe’s funeral Sunday afternoon at United Church here.

Several of the 300 mourners  most of whom knew one another  chuckled when Garrison added, “Ah, yes, Levi had quite an eye for the golden arches.”

They smiled when Garrison reminded them that “Toy Story 2” was Levi’s favorite movie, that he loved to be outdoors and that, given the opportunity, he could be mischievous. Garrison told how Levi, who was born with severe developmental disabilities, once sneaked some sand indoors from the sandbox.

“He was quite a kid,” Garrison said.

Levi’s father, Raymond Boothe, 34, is charged with stabbing Levi several times with needle-nose pliers and leaving him for dead Tuesday night along the Kansas Turnpike near the Leavenworth County-Douglas County line.

It’s not yet known whether Levi died from the stabbing or from being hit by one or more oncoming vehicles. Autopsy results have not been released.

Early Wednesday morning in Lawrence, Kan., Raymond Boothe crashed his car near 27th Street and Lawrence Avenue in what police suspect was an attempt to kill himself and his three remaining children, ages 9, 7 and 6. All four survived.

In the days before Raymond Boothe took the children to Kansas, his wife  the children’s mother, Lisa Boothe, 31  had checked herself into an alcohol rehabilitation program.

Lisa Boothe declined to be interviewed Sunday, but her husband’s sister, Staci Perry, said family members remained united behind Lisa Boothe and her children.

Perry declined comment on the week’s events, noting, “We really don’t know anything because nobody, the police, will tell us anything.”

The surviving children attended the funeral, which lasted about 25 minutes.

“Levi Boothe was the epitome of goodness, sweetness and innocence,” Nancy Chapman, Levi’s special education teacher for the past six years, said afterward.

“His innocence, that’s why we’re here,” she said.

Levi was “profoundly disabled,” according to Larry Otten, director of special education services for the Community School District in Creston, Iowa, about 120 miles from Levi’s family home in Cameron, Mo. Brain tumors had impaired the boy’s ability to speak, and he was heavily medicated. He also wore a leg brace.

He was buried in Diagonal, about a dozen miles from Creston, because his mother’s family is from here.

On the sidewalks outside the church, no one spoke ill of Raymond Boothe.

“Ray Boothe is a good man,” said Lana Bearden, who described herself as a good friend of both Lisa and Raymond Boothe. “This whole thing is like a dream to me. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up because the Ray Boothe I know could not have done this.”

She added, “What we’re seeing here today is the power that addiction has over people and the trauma that is mental illness.”

Last week, police in Cameron said that when Lisa Boothe reported her children missing, she indicated her husband previously had been “committed” for drug and alcohol abuse and mental illness, but he had been “clean for the past eight years.”

Raymond Boothe has been ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation at Larned State Hospital in Kansas.