MENTONE, Ind. — It felt like all of Mentone was there.

This small town in rural northern Indiana has been rocked by the deaths of three children at their bus stop last week and on Friday night, hundreds of those who live in and around the town gathered on the softball field where 9-year-old Alivia Stahl used to play.

Alivia and her brothers, 6-year-old twins Mason and Xzavier, were crossing a winding rural highway to board their bus Tuesday morning when a driver said she didn’t realize the vehicle stopped in the road was a school bus.

Failing to stop for the bus, which State Police say had its stop arm deployed and lights flashing, Alyssa Shepherd hit and killed all three kids. A fourth child, 11-year-old Maverik Lowe, was also struck and badly injured.

What we know:the Indiana bus stop crash, the children and the driver

Too late:Driver in crash that killed 3 children told police she didn't recognize bus lights

Holding candles, many brought from home, the crowd only grew as the cool night stretched on and the program hadn’t started. The organizers asked for patience — the kids’ parents were on their way.

No one was going anywhere.

And when Shane Ingle and Brittany Stahl, the engaged parents of Mason and Xzavier, and Michael Stahl, Brittany’s ex-husband and Alivia’s dad, took their place near the pitcher’s mound the whole crowd squeezed in tight.

'This is why'

All week long, it was the only thing anyone could talk about.

In the coffee shop.

At the library.

Bellied up to the bar at The Bulldog.

And finally, here was their chance to hold this family in their arms.

“People ask me all the time… why don’t I move closer (to work)?” said Shane Ingle, who works about 45 minutes away in Logansport. “I look around tonight and this is why.

“This is why I live this far away from my job, because there is no other community that would care this much.”

For years, Shane Ingle and Brittany Stahl have lived in the Meiser trailer park on State Road 25. They’ve raised their four kids there — Alivia and her older sister, Selena, from Brittany’s marriage to Michael — and the twins.

Selena,11, had a doctor's appointment Tuesday morning, or she likely would have been crossing the street, too.

Remington Bender said he’s watched the boys playing outside since they were in diapers. When he had his own kids, he raised them in the park too.

“My kids started playing with theirs,” he said. “We used to have bonfires and s'mores with each other during the summer.”

A memorial has been growing outside the park since Tuesday. Tractor-shaped balloons are tied to the fence and stuffed animals in plastic zipper bags, to protect against the recent rain, sit piled together. A giant teddy bear holds a sign, written in a child’s scrawl, that says, “Here’s my bears for your memory spot. Your always gonna be my best friend forever!”

Stopping to tuck a bouquet of flowers into the fence, Bender said it feels different in their little neighborhood.

“It's quiet,” he said. “The kids aren't outside playing anymore. Even my kids don't come outside hardly right now.”

His kids aren’t old enough to ride the bus, yet, Bender said. But even crossing S.R. 25 to get the mail can be dangerous.

“Traffic never stops,” Bender said. “It’s like playing old school Frogger dodging the vehicles.”

'Watch for School Bus'

State Road 25 snakes through north central Indiana between Lafayette and Warsaw, knitting together small communities that sit along it.

Fulton, population 333.

Rochester, population 6,218.

Mentone, population 1,001.

Right before it reaches Talma, so small it wasn’t included on the last census, S.R. 25 winds past the trailer park through a series of wide meandering curves. Before each one is a yellow traffic sign: Watch for School Bus.

The driver in the accident told investigators she didn't see the school bus or the children in the path of her pickup truck until it was too late.

"She couldn't make out what it was and by the time she realized ... the kids were right there in front of her," Indiana State Police Detective Michelle Jumper testified at a probable cause hearing in Fulton County Superior Court Tuesday.

In Mentone, where Alivia, Mason and Xzavier went to school, S.R. 25 turns due east and becomes Main Street, where five small blocks of shops — the coffee shop and bar, a diner, a hardware store, a couple of banks and a gas station — break up the grid of fields and farms on either side of the town.

'I can't get it out of my head'

At Java Jack’s, a popular cash-only coffee and lunch spot where everyone gets complimentary dessert delivered before their meal, Sally Walter, Eleanor Heck, Betty Bessinger and Priscilla Gonzales are having breakfast and talking about the accident.

“You have to slow down when it’s dark,” Walter is saying. “Those curves just come up on you.”

It’s two days after the crash and it’s the only thing anyone can talk about. The elementary school where Xzavier, Mason and Alivia went to school is just three blocks away. For years, these longtime friends have been meeting at Java Jack’s for breakfast every Thursday.

When their breakfast gets to the table, the women stop the chatter and join hands to pray.

“I just can’t get it out of my head,” Walter says.

“This morning, they were showing the picture of the three that was killed,” Gonzales says, shaking her head.

“I think the school is a little negligent,” adds Bessinger. “My daughter’s a teacher… she said, ‘Mom, why was the bus stopped on (S.R.) 25 and the kids had to cross the road?’”

“Can you imagine what their Christmas is going to be like?” Walter asks?

Her three friends shake their heads. No one can imagine it.

'Why am I still here?'

Many are wondering why the kids were crossing S.R. 25 to get on the bus. A busy, dark, 55 mph rural highway hardly seems like the best place for a bus stop.

Elgin Ingle, one of Shane Ingle’s older brothers, said his brother and other families had complained about the stop before. They didn’t know why the bus couldn’t turn into the trailer park to pick kids up.

The day after the accident, Tippecanoe Valley Schools said it would move the stop into the trailer park.

“It took three kids' lives to get them to do that after complaining for years,” Elgin Ingle said.

At the candlelight vigil on Friday, Brittany Stahl said Selena wasn’t at the bus stop, but she heard the screams.

“She is suffering,” Stahl said. “It’s so hard, because as parents all three of us are preparing to lay our babies to rest and we still have to pull it together and be a parent to Selena.

“This is so hard.”

Michael Stahl, Alivia and Selena’s dad, said Selena woke up screaming the night after the accident. She can’t understand, he said, why her siblings were taken and she wasn’t.

“She asked me, ‘Why am I still here?’” he said. “What do you tell an 11-year old child?”

Brittany Stahl said she hadn’t been planning to talk at the vigil on Friday, but felt compelled when she saw hundreds of her friends and neighbors encircling her.

“I do hear you,” she said. “I do feel you.

“I appreciate all the love and support that’s come from this community. My babies loved their school; they loved Mentone.”

An uncle's lament

Stahl was home when the accident happened. Elgin Ingle said his brother’s fiancé ran out to the road where here three kids were laying.

“She had to run out to the kids while they're on the concrete,” he said. “She had to decide which kid to run to. I can't imagine what that'd be like.”

Ingle said his family is struggling, but holding together. Shane is the youngest, with three older brothers and a sister. They’re close, Ingle said. Even so, Ingle said it’s been hard to support his little brother while dealing with his own grief and anger over what happened to his niece and nephews.

“This has been the toughest time of my life,” he said. “I can’t imagine what my brother is going through.

“I can't even help him. It destroys me. Anybody who’s a big brother knows your job is to shield your family and that’s all I’ve ever done but I can’t protect Shane from this and I can't protect Brittany from this.”

Elgin Ingle said his brother’s life changed when the twin boys were born.

“Shane’s done everything he can to make his life and those boys’ lives better,” he said. “Shane works his fingers to the bone every day at a back-breaking job to make sure those boys have everything.”

Ingle said the twins were sweet, shy little boys. Alivia was an excellent student and a great kid, like a "mother hen" to her little brothers, he said.

"She was what you hope your daughter would be like," he said.

Ingle said he’s worried about what this loss will do to his brother.

“His whole life, he’s been the sweetest kid ever,” he said. “He’s always been a super nice and peaceful person. But he’s pretty hurt, so I can imagine there’s a little hate there.”

Support pours in

The support from their community and beyond has been unimaginable, though, Ingle said. The family has heard from people all over the world. A GoFundMe to raise money for Shane and Brittany has raised more than $130,000.

Another for Maverik and his family has raised more than $50,000. A recent update from the family said he's had five surgeries so far and has a long road ahead of him but he's been awake off and on and able to talk.

The money won’t bring back their children, Ingle said, but it will help his brother’s family focus on healing without having to worry about funeral expenses and returning to work.

“Shane's going to need that because when can you go back to work?” Ingle said. “It isn’t going to make him feel any better but it’s going to keep his mind off of other things and on his family so he can hold it together, because it’s hard to stay together through something like this.”

Tragedy inspires action, change

In the wake of the accident, the families have said they’d like to see changes made so that no one else has to lose a child like this.

Jessica Chambers has an idea on how to make that happen.

“It just made so much more sense for them to not have to cross the street,” she explained, sitting just a few miles from the accident site in her Rochester living room last week.

Bouncing eight-month-old Evie on her lap and keeping an eye on Brenna, her 4-year-old hiding in the next room, Chambers explained how she first heard about the accident when her mother-in-law called to make sure Chamber’s oldest, 7-year-old Mikinley was OK.

“All she’d heard was somebody got hit getting on a school bus,” Chambers said. “She instantly called me before there were any details out. Immediately I was invested in it because somebody thought it could have been me, my child.”

Chambers went online and saw early news reports about the accident.

“When I heard what happened, I wanted to do something,” she said. “They can only have so many prayers, and it already happened so what can you do to prevent it from happening again?”

She went to Change.org and created a petition calling for all bus stops to be moved to the right side of the street. She’d never made a petition before, but had seen them circulating on Facebook before.

“I did it at like 10 o’clock at night,” she said. “I thought, if I wake up with 20 signatures in the morning, I'll be so happy.”

When she woke up the next day, there were more than 500. On Saturday morning, there were more than 100,000 signatures. With that kind of support behind her, Chambers said she plans to reach out to state officials. She’ll likely find a sympathetic ear —several Indiana lawmakers have already said they plan to file school bus safety-related bills in the upcoming session.

Though she lives nearby, Chamber said she doesn’t know the families involved personally. Her oldest daughter goes to Rochester schools. It doesn’t matter, though. In a small town, Chambers said, everyone feels like family.

Can it be stopped?:Indiana lawmakers looking at ways to prevent bus stop accidents

“It’s such a small town,” she said. “There’s not much else that goes on. So when something like this happens, it’s big. And even if you don’t know everybody, you see almost everybody. Within a one-week period, you’re going to run into just about everyone in the town… if you’re out at the Walmart or Kroger (grocery store).

“Chances are, you probably saw those kids at one time or another.”

Changes at local schools are already taking hold.

Tippecanoe Valley Schools, where all four students involved attended school, said it will establish a transportation safety review committee to examine all of the district's bus stop locations.

Rochester Schools, a neighboring district that also has bus stops along S.R. 25, has already started reviewing is stops and made changes on 10 different routes so far. Superintendent Jana Vance said the changes were primarily on the several highways that cut through the rural district, allowing kids to be dropped off and picked up on the same side of the street.

“There was a brief moment when you start hearing radio traffic and you hear (State Road) 25 and you know that’s your area,” she said. “You look at the clock and you know your buses are out.

“You hear those sirens, you just starting praying and hoping it’s not yours.”

Another change has already come from the accident, too.

The Mentone Youth League retired the No. 14 jersey that Alivia Stahl wore when she played there.

"Softball is something that was very important to Alivia," said Dan Thompson, her coach. "She loved it. It was her happy place."

"No softball player, from today on, will ever wear number 14."

Call IndyStar education reporter Arika Herron at 317-444-6077. Follow her on Twitter: @ArikaHerron.