What began as a simple celebration is now a wound running through an entire city.
Families who arrived with wrapped gifts left in shock, some without the people they came with.
Children who just hours earlier were laughing over toys and cake are now haunted by images no birthday should hold:
the sound of shots, the weight of adults shielding them, the sight of friends and relatives falling.
In the days ahead, investigators will map bullet paths, collect shell casings, and search for motives.
But the deeper damage is not easily measured.
Parents are replaying every second, wondering how joy turned so quickly into horror.
Neighbors are questioning whether their block,
once a place of barbecues and play, is still home.
Stockton is left holding a terrible paradox: a party for a child that will be remembered not for candles, but for the night innocence was violently taken.
