The cake for a 2-year-old's birthday was about to be cut when gunfire rang out in a banquet hall in Stockton, California, Saturday night , claiming the lives of four people, including three children.

"I actually thought it was my balloons popping. It was gunshots," Patrice Williams, the mother of the birthday girl, told the Associated Press . She said partygoers nearby dropped to the ground at the sound of the gunshots, calling the moment "unexpected."

"I don’t know what happened, and I’m just so shocked and lost,” Williams said, according to the AP.

Williams said she and her family were celebrating her daughter's second birthday over the weekend when the mass shooting occurred. Her daughter was uninjured, Williams told AP, but her sister, a cousin and three of her friends were shot

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