Josselin Corea Escalante was 9 when she and her mother and younger brother left Guatemala to seek asylum in the United States, believing it would offer them safety.

They ended up in Tennessee, where Josselin — whose family calls her Dallana, her middle name — celebrated turning 15 in 2023 with a spring quinceañera in a Nashville ballroom.

But last week, another student shot and killed Josselin, 16, in her high school cafeteria. Now her family, still waiting for an asylum decision, is questioning whether it is worth staying. The main reason they made the harrowing trip to the United States — on foot, nearly two months — was fear that Josselin and her brother would be kidnapped or killed by gangs in Guatemala.

“We had a dream for a better life,” her father, German Corea, said in Spanish this week. “But the reality is that it’s not better anywhere. In Guatemala, you’ve never heard of someone killing someone in school.”