At a vigil in a Santa Clarita park, Saugus High students mourn friends, and reflect on a terrifying morning

The students gathered at a popular park in Santa Clarita, sharing their fears and the trauma of the day, just hours after their worlds were shaken by a fellow classmate with a gun.

Some of the dozens of Saugus High School students at a vigil held in the city’s Central Park recounted how a typical day goes on their campus, and just how terrifyingly different that routine became Thursday.

On most days at Saugus, juniors and seniors file into classrooms for their first period around 7 a.m.  Burning time before their first class, freshmen and sophomores gather in the school’s courtyard area, known as “the quad,” a set of picnic tables near a patch of grass, in front of the school’s counseling office.

That is where students remembered watching a fellow student open fire on his peers, killing two, and injuring three others, before shooting himself.

The group of mainly sophomores and freshmen scattered from the area, running either off campus or into classrooms.

Anthony Donato, a sophomore, and his friends were in the quad waiting for their chemistry class. Just before the shots rang out, the group got up to take a walk when they heard a loud boom.

“It was silent for a good five seconds, and you could kinda hear the contemplation of the kid who was shooting, and then you hear the next few shots and we all ran,” Donato said, while standing with his friends at Central Park.

Dozens of other students, mostly freshmen and sophomores, gathered at the park to mourn the loss of their peers, and to process an experience they had only heard of on the news.

“And then when it happens basically in your living room, you just kinda get shookin’ up a lot,” Donato said.

After the shots rang out, Donato and his friends took a familiar shortcut. They ran to a drain pipe that runs past the edge of campus. The group crawled into the tiny space and out into a bordering neighborhood.

Most of the students gathering at Central Park were on their way to school when the shooting happened.

“If I was there on time, I know I would’ve been there, too,” said Larren Wells, a sophomore who had been running five minutes later than usual Thursday morning. She and her friends typically hang out at the quad before class.

She turned back home once she heard of the shooting.

One of her friends was 20 feet from the shooter. Wells said her friend ran through the front gate and into a neighboring home.

Another friend took shelter in a classroom where she remembered seeing a girl run inside with gunshot wounds to her shoulder and upper abdomen, Wells said. A third friend was tennis teammates with one of the wounded.

From her bedroom, Wells said she tried to comfort her friends through Facetime and in their group text while they waited in the darkened classrooms.

“No matter what, we’re gonna carry the burden with us,” she said.

Students said going back to school would be a challenge.

“It won’t be normal,” Wells said. “But it’ll push us to work harder and the school will be more safe now.”

“It’s never going to be the same,” said Santiago Pilar, also a sophomore. “When we go to the spot (the quad), we’re just gonna think about what happened. It’s just gonna bring bad vibes.”

Other students spoke of fear.

“I guess you have to be more mindful, how we defend ourselves, or how our days are gonna be,” said Karl Sevilla, a sophomore who wore his ROTC uniform.

“Cause whatever is gonna come to that door next, we’ll never know; it could be a student, it could be another shooter.”

The park where students gathered Thursday evening sits several blocks from the high school.Still an active crime scene, the school campus remained roped off by yellow crime scene tape, and  Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigators stood watch next to their patrol cars along the roads leading to the campus.

Taped to a fence just outside campus were white pieces of paper, forming a message: “We (heart sign) u.”