A three-year-old escaped an almost certain death on Thursday as a killer stalked her nursery in one of the world's worst child massacres.
Little Nong Am was fast asleep with a blanket covering her body when disgraced former cop Panya Khamrab, 34, stormed the school, leaving the lifeless bodies of 37 children and teachers in his wake.
As her classmates were slaughtered, the three-year-old managed to survive as the crazed attacker failed to notice the little girl beneath a blanket in a deep slumber at the day care centre in Thailand.
It comes as the first pictures of the tragic victims emerge.
They include a harrowing photo of two twins, Weerapat and Weeraphon Nuatkao, and their pregnant teacher, Supaporn Pramongmuk, who was just eight months away from having a child of her own.
Confirming news of his beloved wife's death on Facebook, the educator's husband wrote: "I would like to thank all the support for me and my family. My wife has fulfilled her every duty as a teacher.
"Please be a teacher in heaven, and my child please take care of your mother in heaven."
Another series of heartbreaking images showed the children playing and learning at the Thai nursery before their lives were cruelly taken.
Meanwhile, government buildings flew flags at half mast on Friday to mourn victims - 23 of them children - of the carnage in Uthai Sawan, a town 500 km (310 miles) northeast of Bangkok, the capital of the largely Buddhist country.
After leaving the daycare centre - a pink, one-storey building surrounded by a lawn and small palm trees - filled with dead, dying and wounded, the ex-officer went home and shot dead his wife and son before turning his weapon on himself.
Most of the children, aged between two and five, were slashed to death, while adults were shot, police said in the aftermath of the worst child death toll in a massacre by a single killer in recent history.
The aunt of a three-year old boy who died in the slaughter held a stuffed dog and a toy tractor in her lap as she recounted how she had rushed to the scene when the news first spread.
"I came and I saw two bodies in front of the school and I immediately knew that the kid was already dead," said Suwimon Sudfanpitak, 40, who had been looking after her nephew, Techin, while his parents worked in Bangkok.
Another of the dead was Kritsana Sola, a chubby-cheeked two-year-old who loved dinosaurs and football and was nicknamed "captain". He had just got a new haircut and was proudly showing it off, said his aunt, Naliwan Duangket, 27.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha was set to visit on Friday, and government officials laid royal wreaths and flowers outside the daycare centre. King Maha Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida were also set to meet victim's families, according to a local announcement.
Police identified the attacker as Panya Khamrap, 34, a former police sergeant who was discharged over drug accusations and who was facing trial on a drugs charge.
Panya went to the daycare centre to pick up his child after attending court earlier in the day, police spokesperson Paisal Luesomboon told broadcaster ThaiPBS. When he did not find his child there, he began the killing spree.
"He started shooting, slashing, killing children," Paisal said.
One witness, Kittisak Polprakan, said he saw the attacker calmly walking out of the centre after the massacre, "as if he was just taking a normal stroll".
Police official Chakkraphat Wichitvaidya told Reuters autopsies showed the children had been slashed with a large knife, sometimes multiple times, and adults shot.
He said police were investigating the motive, while suspecting that Panya could have been triggered by stress.
"I don't know (why he did this), but he was under a lot of pressure," Panya's mother told Nation TV, citing debts her son had run up and his drug taking.
Photographs taken at the centre by rescuers and provided to Reuters showed the tiny bodies of the killed laid out on blankets. Abandoned juice boxes were scattered across the floor.
"He was heading towards me and I begged him for mercy, I didn't know what to do," one distraught woman told ThaiPBS, fighting back tears.
"He didn't say anything, he shot at the door while the kids were sleeping," said another woman, becoming distraught.
The attacker forced his way into a locked room where the children were sleeping, Jidapa said. Three boys and a girl who survived were being treated in hospital, police said.
About 30 children were at the centre when the attack began, fewer than usual as heavy rain had kept many people away, said district official Jidapa Boonsom.
Hundreds of people posted condolences on the Facebook page of the Mutahi Sawant Child Development Centre under its last post before the massacre, an account of a visit the children made to a Buddhist temple in September.
In a message, the Vatican said Pope Francis had been deeply saddened by the "horrific attack", which he condemned as an "act of unspeakable violence against innocent children".
The massacre is among the worst involving children killed by one person.
In Norway in 2011, Anders Breivik killed 69 people, mostly teenagers, at a summer camp, while the death toll in other cases includes 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut in 2012, 16 at Dunblane in Scotland in 1996 and 19 at a school in Uvalde, Texas, this year.
Gun laws are strict in Thailand, but gun ownership is high compared with some Southeast Asian countries, and illegal weapons are common, with many brought in from strife-torn neighbours.
