Monday night I put together the toughest 1A I’ve done in my short (18-month) tenure as a copy editor and page designer.

Sunday midday, two boys in Crystal River, southwest of Ocala near the coast, began a terrible game of gun play. It ended with one of them, a 13-year-old, shot in the chest at point-blank range. He died. Police have brought manslaughter charges against the boy who held the gun, an 11-year-old.

The Star-Banner put a skeleton of the story at the top of Monday’s front page. For Tuesday’s paper, which I designed, our reporter on the story fleshed it out with details from police reports, and heart-breaking reactions from the family.

I’ve put together some pretty gruesome Iraq war packages, but avoided pictures showing bodies strewn in the wake of bombings. I’ve seen photographs of the aftermath of suicide attacks in Israel, where the assailant’s head sits awkwardly on the debris-covered ground. I’ve seen pictures of people butchering dogs for food out of desperation in Liberia. I’ve winced at pictures of bloated bodies floating in the wake of Hurricane Jeanne in Haiti.

But, nothing quite prepared to see the picture the family submitted of this dead teen. It showed the 13-year-old frozen in a smile that his family won’t see again in life.

I’m not the story here. Still, I wanted to share some of the thoughts I had while putting together the front page of Tuesday’s newspaper.

• I kept imagining the reactions of both families picking up the newspaper from their driveways in the morning. Would the alleged shooter’s family feel it was fair? They didn’t comment for print, and the reporter wrote that media camped outside their home for much of Monday. Would the victim’s family feel the story was respectful?

• What kind of bravery and sensitivity did our reporter and photographer have to muster in order to work with the family to do their jobs?
• Was the work I did at the end of the process respectful of both families, the reporter and the photographer?

Of course, answers to all of these questions are subjective. As a designer, the only thing I can do is my mindful best.

Michigan State University did me a favor by requiring sensitivity training for budding journalists. Still, this experience has helped me understand the chasm between theory and practice.