I'm sure that they were in cash enough to allow for a normal level of redemptions. But keeping too much money in cash changes the fundamental nature of your mutual fund, because the asset mix (and your ability to manage it to move out of assets that perform poorly into better-performing assets, depending on the kind of fund you're in) is what investors are paying you to do as the mutual fund manager.

When you get an abnormal level of redemptions, you're going to end up selling stocks. That's how it works.