A teenage jock, gunned down at a Lake Worth school, forgave the shooter but found no justice in the legal system.

An assistant principal, shot at by a student, never returned to the Fort Lauderdale school again.

The father of a Miami-Dade student killed by a classmate used his death as motivation to become a better man.

In years past, all three were touched by terror in a place that was supposed to be safe: a South Florida public school. Though the headlines fade and the shock dissipates, they say such violence leaves an indelible mark. Nobody walks away the same person.

Now, another family must tread that emotional land mine. Anthony Thompson and Joyce Collette this month buried their daughter, Amanda Collette, 15, who was shot in the hallway of Fort Lauderdale's Dillard High. Her classmate and friend has been charged with the murder.

At the funeral to offer their support were Jorge and Maria Gough. The couple's 14-year-old son was murdered in 2004 by a Southwood Middle School classmate in Miami-Dade County.

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"We wanted to let them know we know what they're going through," Jorge Gough says. "We know how much it hurts."

Traumatic experiences

In the immediate aftermath, they swim in a toxic stew of shock, anger and grief.

The Goughs' son, Jaime, died after a boy he considered his best friend lured him into a school bathroom stall. There, Michael Hernandez, 14, slashed Jaime's neck and stabbed him more than 40 times in the neck, face and hands.

Maria Gough remembers hating the family and the boy who killed her only son. Jorge Gough recalls how grief tore the couple apart and he considered divorce.

"But I knew I needed to be with my family," he says. "I knew I'd be lost and my wife would be lost."

On the last day of the 1994-95 school year, Dieuly Aristilde arrived at Lake Worth High to pick up his girlfriend. He encountered Alex Kucer, 19, whom he'd known since middle school.

Kucer told police he feared Aristilde. But at the time, witnesses said that when Aristilde tried to get away, Kucer shot him. The bullet ripped through Aristilde's intestines, critically wounding him.

"I wanted to see him punished," Aristilde says.

He wanted a trial and stronger charges for Kucer, who got a plea bargain, Aristilde says. He wanted him charged with attempted murder, not aggravated battery.

He was an 18-year-old Santaluces High graduate heading to college when he was shot by the white high school dropout. Aristilde, who is black, thought race figured into the lesser charge.

"It just took something out of me, and I didn't go on to college," Aristilde says. "It changed everything in my life. You can imagine how the anger built in my heart. I felt like a black man worth nothing."

Two years before that shooting, in 1993, Marvin Jones, 17, shot at Dillard High Assistant Principal Debra Bowers after she suspended him.