CAZENOVIA - How could it happen here, in a school so rural that the view from the ridgetop playground is one of grazing cows and glowing maples?

How could it happen on Friday, when the toilet paper streaming from the school trees and the blue hair of the students advertised Weston's homecoming celebration?

How could it happen on a day when Abby Rothering, a cute 8-year-old who attends the K-12 school, bounced out of bed so happily? Weston teacher Mary Ann Rothering said that her daughter, Abby, announced: "Today is going to be a good day."

The answer is that tragedy can hit anywhere, even at a rural Sauk County school on homecoming weekend. All it takes, really, is an angry person with a gun, and a car accident.

But Friday's twin tragedies seem especially cruel because the Weston School District is so small, and so central to community life.

Everyone here seems to have multiple ties to both Principal John Klang, who died of gunshot wounds, and a student who died in an unrelated car accident just minutes before the shooting.

Friday before school, Jeanette Unbehaun was in her role as cheerleading coach, selling the blue and silver "spirit beads" to the kids who had dyed their hair blue and painted their checks with W's for the Weston Silver Eagles homecoming game against North Crawford.

Then, her pager went off, and she became a member of the Hillpoint First Responders, racing off to an accident at a hilly intersection about two miles away.

There, her heart sank. She recognized the wrecked Pontiac Grand Am as belonging to Erik Fichtel, a 16- year-old boy she knows. She cuts Erik's hair and knows both his parents, who are both connected to the schools.

Then, as she was comforting Erik in his last moments, she saw the police speed away.

"I asked where they were going and they said there was a shooting at school," she said. Her own two children, Zach, 11, and Lynsey, 8, are students there.

"I wondered if I should go back and get my kids."

Meanwhile, back at the school, custodian Dave Thompson was wrestling a shotgun away from accused shooter Eric Hainstock, 15. Witnesses said Hainstock used a second gun to shoot Klang moments later. Thompson also has two children at the school, where his wife, Valerie, is a kindergarten teacher. And Klang was a longtime school board member, Weston alumnus, and father and uncle of Weston graduates.

And so it goes through this community, where it is no exaggeration to say that everyone is connected.

"We're like a big family. Everyone is related to everyone else," said Marilyn Cooper, who owns the Dewdrop Inn in Cazenovia, one of three rural communities that send their children to the Weston district.

Cooper brushed away a tear as she described principal Klang as "the bedrock of the community."

Then the door to the caf and tavern opened, and three mothers herded in a group of teenagers, some of them weeping.

"We have some sad kids, Marilyn," one of the moms said.

The teens were still dressed in their school colors, complete with face paint. But instead of spending the afternoon yelling their heads off at the homecoming pep rally and parade, they were grieving for their principal and their classmate.

Erik Fichtel, a football player, was known for "a smile that could light up a room." He was class president sophomore year and hosted the class picnic at the end of the school year, driving the tractor to give his classmates hayrides. Like most of the members of the 49- member class of '08, they had known him since kindergarten.

Now, they stared at the caf television, where their school had shown up on CNN, courtesy of the news helicopters hovering above the school. Junior Melissa Seep talked about hearing of school shootings elsewhere, and the unreality of having it happen here.

"Now, it's our school on television," she said. "You wouldn't even think one of these things would happen here."

Now, though, they had two deaths and a young man in jail.

"We'll get through this together," Dawn Seep, Melissa's mother, said. "That's the positive of a small town. We'll all be there for each other."