A city mourned at a candlelight vigil outside the Wisconsin State Capitol, coming together one night after the shocking violence at Abundant Life Christian school in Madison on Dec. 16. That’s when a teenage girl shot and killed a fellow student, a teacher and then herself inside the school.

“It was just a whole range of like the worriedness and sadness and confusion,” said Jackson Ida, who went to the vigil to support his friends at Abundant Life.

Three dead. Six wounded and hospitalized. Two of the victims suffering grave injuries.

The teacher killed was 42-year-old Erin West, who was a substitute coordinator. The student who died at the scene was 14-year old Rubi Patricia Vergara, who was a freshman.

“Please pray for the two that are still in the hospital. It’s life threatening and they may not survive,” said Chuck Moore, executive director of the school system that manages Abundant Life, at the vigil.

Police are still piecing together what happened.

“The first officers arrived at 11 a.m., and immediately went in the building,” Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said.

After determining the shooter had taken her own life, and transporting the injured to a hospital, police prioritized reunifying students and teachers with their families. Eight miles away, police served a search warrant at the shooter’s family home, looking for evidence.

“They kind of all just swarmed right across the street to where it happened,” said Dane Zogbaum, a neighbor.

Police identified the shooter as Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, a 15-year-old student at Abundant Life.

“We’re a small private Christian school here on the east side of Madison,” said Barbara Wiers, an administrator at Abundant Life. She shared details about the school’s security measures, which include security cameras and regular lockdown drills.

“When they heard lockdown, lockdown and nothing else, they knew it was real,” Wiers said.

Details about the devastating shooting continue to unfold. According to the AP, a man in California has been ordered by a court there to turn in his weapons and ammunition after interacting with the shooter online about plotting a mass shooting with her.

Abundant Life has been closed since the shooting. Neighbor Mackenzie Truitt visited the school to add a poinsettia plant to a sidewalk memorial honoring the victims.

“My younger brother went there. I have a lot of friends and family friends that go there as well,” said Truitt, who added her brother knows the victims personally.

“It affects everybody. I mean, when you go through a trauma like this, it’s horrible, even if you weren’t directly impacted. It still causes a lot of harm to you mentally, just knowing what other people are going through,” she said.

The rest of Madison schools stayed open but some were placed on a brief secure hold after receiving hoax threats. The Madison school district’s superintendent told those gathered at the vigil that prevention of future school violence goes beyond physical security.

“I think it’d be easy to say that we’re going to work on safety,” said Superintendent Joe Gothard. “We’re going to work on creating safe schools. And I don’t think that goes far enough, because we know what many of those things are. What I plead to you tonight is that we find a new way, a deeper way, more meaningful way to connect with our community — children to children, children to staff, families to families.”

For Ida, school safety is key to empowering youth and preventing violence.

“I mean, the whole point of all of this,” he said, “is to be able to go and to get education so you can become the people who will hopefully be able to make this never happen again in the future.”