FREDERICKSBURG, Texas -- The Cantu home that's usually filled with the sound of children playing is silent. Now all you hear are balloons rustling in the wind. They are part of a memorial with flowers and candles to remember 15-year-old Brian Cantu and his 13-year-old sister Justine.
The teens were killed in a fire that destroyed their trailer home Tuesday morning. Investigators say the fire started in an interior wall, but the cause hasn't been determined.
"That's kind of when things started to fall apart for us," said Fredericksburg Middle School Principal Missy Garcia-Stevens.
Justine was a student and basketball player at the middle school. Brian attended a few years earlier.
The campus has become a memorial to the Cantu kids. Students openly expressing their sorrow through poems, T-shirts, and posters. Now the kids are moving from grieving to fundraising.
"We sold T-shirts yesterday for the game, and proceeds from the T-shirts are going to the Cantu family," Garcia-Stevens said. "We've also have donation jars around campus, and they're out all the time."
Principal Stevens, as her students call her, says giving back like this is the norm for Fredericksburg, and something she knows about all to well.
"I lost my daughter two years ago in a car accident. She was a sophomore at Fredericksburg High School, and this community truly...I was humbled," Garcia-Stevens said.
So she's paying it forward, and she's not the only one.
Iglesia Del Nuevo Testamento or the New Testament Church on West Park Street has been flooded with money, clothes, and food for the family.
"Our first initial reaction was to come and make coffee and buy donuts to help the family, the immediate family, at that morning. That was our intention," said the church's first lady Rachel Garcia. "And then one thing just lead to another. Within about an hour, we were running a donation station."
From the money and the clothing, to the makeshift memorial at their mailbox, the Cantu family says they are overwhelmed with the support they are receiving from the community.
"We never expected this," said Brian and Justine's cousin David Perez. "And it just shows. It's hard that something like this has to happen in order for a community to come together, but it does show that a community can come together and become as one as a family."
David said his family is grateful for everything they've received, and the gifts that really touch them have been from the youngest members of the community, like the one he got Thursday and gave to his aunt -- Brian and Justine's mom.
"I go, 'Tia, I got something to give you and its from a fifth grader at my school.' I pulled out the five dollar bill and the tears that came out of her eyes," David recalled.
Tears of sadness for the children she's lost, mixed with joy for the community that's standing by the Cantu family.
The Cantu family will hold a joint funeral service for Brian and Justine Saturday afternoon. Their father, Armando Cantu, who suffered burns on over 40 percent of his body trying to save them, is expected to be there.
