It was just after dusk on Monday, November 3, 2025, when the fairy lights in Jazmyn Roderick’s bedroom suddenly felt too bright, too fragile, too much like a lie. She was nineteen, curled on her bed in the small second-floor apartment at 185 Clinton Street in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, trying for the hundredth time to end things with Sean Rivera, the twenty-four-year-old ex who had been sleeping on their couch for weeks and refused to leave. She had opened the door only a crack, just enough to tell him it was over for good, when his hand shot through the gap like a striking cobra and the cold circle of a stolen .380 pressed against her temple. His voice was calm, almost tender, the way people speak when they’ve already decided everything. “Have sex with me right now,” he said, “or I kill you.”

In that instant the entire world narrowed to the weight of the barrel and the smell of gun oil. Jazmyn’s mind went white, a blinding flash that swallowed sound and time. She did the only thing left to do: she ran. Bare feet pounding down the short hallway, screaming for her mother, she burst into Kimberly Pieranunzi’s bedroom where Kimberly, forty years old and twenty-eight days away from finally becoming the registered nurse she had fought so hard to be, threw open her arms to shield her daughter. Sean Rivera followed. The first bullets tore into Kimberly before she could even finish her scream. She crumpled in the doorway, blood blooming across the lavender scrubs she still wore from clinicals, her body forming a final, futile wall between the gunman and the child she had raised alone for so long.

Donald Roderick Jr. was whistling as he climbed the stairs. Forty-five years old, sawdust still clinging to his work boots, a grocery bag swinging from one hand because Monday was meatloaf night and he had promised the girls his special recipe. He had met Kimberly three years earlier at a backyard barbecue and fallen hard for the fierce single mom who laughed like sunlight and never let life knock her down for long. He had become Jazmyn’s dad in every way that mattered: teaching her to cast a fishing line, sitting through every terrible high-school band concert, threatening to “have a talk” with any boy who broke her heart. He turned his key in the lock smiling, completely unaware that the apartment he was walking into had already become a slaughterhouse.

The door swung open and the second volley caught him square in the chest. Donald dropped where he stood, the bag splitting open, potatoes and ground beef rolling across the blood-slick floor like some grotesque joke. Less than sixty seconds had passed since Rivera’s whispered ultimatum. In the bedroom, Jazmyn stood frozen over her mother’s body, the white flash receding just enough for raw terror to flood in. Rivera looked at her, looked at the gun, looked at the ruin he had made, and made his final choice. He pressed the muzzle beneath his chin and pulled the trigger. The apartment fell suddenly, horribly silent except for the soft drip of blood and the distant wail of sirens that were still minutes away.

Jazmyn didn’t remember deciding to run again. She only remembered moving. Over her mother’s body, past Donald’s outstretched hand still clutching his keys, down the narrow stairwell, barefoot and screaming into the freezing November night. Surveillance cameras caught her in fragments: a terrified blur in pajama shorts, ponytail whipping behind her, hands and arms painted red with her family’s blood. Two hundred yards. That was all that separated the apartment from Social Street Smoke Shop, but it felt like miles. She slammed into the glass door so hard the bell nearly ripped from its frame.

Dominique Domingo was restocking cigarettes when the door exploded open and a blood-soaked girl collapsed against the counter screaming, “He shot them! He shot my mom! Hide me!” Dominique didn’t hesitate. She hit the lock, dragged Jazmyn behind the counter, and dialed 911 while the girl shook so violently the shelves rattled. “Stay with me, baby,” Dominique kept whispering, wrapping her own hoodie around Jazmyn’s trembling shoulders. “You’re safe now. You’re safe.” Outside, red and blue lights finally began to flood Clinton Street, too late for Kimberly, too late for Donald, but just in time for the daughter they had both died trying to protect.

When police entered the apartment minutes later, the scene was apocalyptic. Kimberly lay in her bedroom doorway, arms still reaching toward where her daughter had been. Donald sprawled across the threshold, keys in one hand, groceries scattered like offerings. Rivera sat slumped against Jazmyn’s bed, the gun that had come all the way from a robbery in Maine now cooling beside him. Four minutes. Three bodies. One survivor who thought she had died in that white flash and somehow woke up on the other side.

In the weeks that followed, Woonsocket wrapped its arms around the girl who had outrun death itself. Vigils bloomed under bare trees strung with purple ribbons. GoFundMe pages shattered records. Strangers sent letters saying they had been Jazmyn once, that her story gave them the courage to leave. At the crowded memorial in Bernon Park, friends spoke of Kimberly’s laugh that could light up the darkest room, of Donald’s terrible dad jokes and perfect grilled steaks, of a love that was supposed to last decades longer than the four minutes it was given.

Jazmyn stood wrapped in blankets that night, eyes swollen but fierce, and told the crowd, “I know none of us were supposed to live that night. But I did. And every day I have left is going to count—for both of them.” Somewhere in the cold Rhode Island wind, church bells began to toll, and a nineteen-year-old girl who had seen hell up close took her first shaky step toward whatever comes after survival.