They arrived with wrapped gifts and store-bought cupcakes, expecting nothing more dramatic than off-key singing and too much sugar. Instead, families watched loved ones collapse beside folding tables and plastic chairs. The images — tiny shoes left in the driveway, a half-cut cake, toys scattered across the lawn — will haunt this community long after the crime tape comes down.

Now Stockton waits, caught between anger and numb disbelief. Investigators move door to door, collecting camera footage and fragments of shell casings, trying to understand why anyone would unleash such violence on a house full of children. In living rooms nearby, parents hold their kids a little tighter, wondering how to explain the unexplainable. The party will never be finished, the candles never blown out. But the names of those lost, neighbors say, must not be forgotten.