Recess had finally started, so Ava Olsen picked up her chocolate cupcake, then headed outside toward the swings. And that’s when the 7-year-old saw the gun.

It was black and in the hand of someone the first-graders on the playground would later describe as a thin, towering figure with wispy blond hair and angry eyes. Dressed in dark clothes and a baseball cap, he had just driven up in a Dodge Ram, jumping out of the pickup as it rolled into the chain-link fence that surrounded the play area. It was 1:41 on a balmy, blue-sky afternoon in late September, and Ava’s class was just emerging from an open door directly in front of him to join the other kids already outside. At first, a few of them assumed he had come to help with something or say hello.

Then he pulled the trigger.

“I hate my life,” the children heard him scream in the same moment he added Townville Elementary to the long list of American schools redefined by a shooting.

A round struck the shoulder of Ava’s teacher, who was standing at the green metal door, before she yanked it shut. But the shooter kept firing, shattering a glass window.

Near the cubbies inside, 6-year-old Collin Edwards felt his foot vibrate, then burn, as if he had stepped in a fire. A bullet had blown through the inside of his right ankle and popped out beneath his big toe, punching a hole in the sole of his Velcro-strapped sneaker. As his teachers pulled him away from the windows, Collin recalled later, he spotted a puddle of blood spreading across the gray wax tile floor in the hallway. Someone else, he realized, had been hurt, too.

Outside, Ava had dropped her cupcake. The Daisy Scout remembered what her mom had said: If something doesn’t feel right, run. She sprinted toward the far side of the building, rounding a corner to safety. Nowhere in sight, though, was Jacob Hall, the tiny boy with oversize, thick-lensed glasses Ava had decided to marry when they grew up. He had been just a few steps behind her at the door, but she never saw him come out. Ava hoped he was okay.

Standing on the wood chips near a yellow tube slide, Siena Kibilko felt stunned. Until that moment, her most serious concern had been which “How to Train Your Dragon” toy she would get for her upcoming seventh birthday.

“Run!” Siena recalled a teacher shouting, and she did.

Karson Robinson, one of the biggest kids in class, hadn’t waited for instructions. At the initial sound of gunshots, he scrambled over a fence on the opposite side of the playground and briefly headed toward the baseball fields where, as a Townville Giant, he had gotten his first recreation league hit. Karson then turned back to the school and found his classmates banging on a door.

“Let us in,” Siena begged, and the kids were hustled inside.

The gunfire had stopped by then, and, in a room on the other side of the school, Collin had discovered the source of all that blood.

Sprawled on the floor was Jacob, the boy Ava adored. At 3½ feet tall, he was the smallest child in first grade — everyone’s kid brother. On the green swings at recess, Collin would call him “Little J” because that always made Jacob cackle in a way that made everyone else laugh, too. But now his eyes were closed, and Collin wondered if they would ever open again.

“Press, press, press,” an automated defibrillator repeated as the school nurse pushed on Jacob’s chest, trying to keep him alive. “Give breath. Give breath.”

“Look at me,” a teacher urged Collin, but the boy couldn’t stop staring at his friend.

Read the full series at The Washington Post.

Ricky Carioti

Jacob Hall was the smallest child in first grade. (Photo by Kerry Burriss) Top: Ava Olsen, holding her cat, Autumn, in her room, alternated between bouts of solitude and anger after the shooting.

After the shooter was apprehended, a school bus transported shaken students to a nearby church. Photo by Katie McLean/Independent-Mail via AP.

Ava, 7, prays with her family — brother Cameron, 6; her father, David; and her mother, Mary — before dinner. Photo by Ricky Carioti.

Jacob, 6, loved superheroes, and mourners were asked to dress up for the funeral. Photo by Ken Ruinard/ Independent-Mail via AP; Rainier Ehrhardt/AP.

Staff at Townville Elementary peered down at the teenage gunman through a second-floor window.

Staff at Townville Elementary peered down at the teenage gunman through a second-floor window.