Associated Press Writer
AP Photos
AP Graphic AMISH SCHOOL SHOOTING
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Copyright 2006 By The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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Gunman kills at least 3, then self at 1-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania
Eds: For those seeking an alternate approach.
%photo(AP Photos%)
AP Graphic AMISH SCHOOL SHOOTING
By MARK SCOLFORO
Associated Press Writer
NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) – It was a scene seemingly frozen in time: a one-room schoolhouse nestled amid a picturesque landscape of horse-drawn buggies, green pastures and well-tended farms.
The Amish people of bucolic Lancaster County left behind the conveniences and problems of the modern world to create a sanctuary where the living is simple and violent crime is virtually nonexistent.
But they could not keep out a milk-truck driver carrying three guns and a childhood grudge Monday as he stormed a tiny Amish school and opened fire on a dozen girls, killing three of them before committing suicide.
At least seven other victims were critically wounded, state police said.
It was the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week, and it could not have happened in a more unlikely place.
After taking over the school, the gunman sent the boys and adults outside and barricaded the doors with two-by-fours. Most of the victims were shot, execution-style, at point-blank range, after being lined up along the chalkboard, their feet bound with wire and plastic ties, authorities said.
"This is a horrendous, horrific incident for the Amish community. They're solid citizens in the community. They're good people. They don't deserve ... no one deserves this," State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said.
The attack bore similarities to a deadly school shooting last week in Bailey, Colo., and authorities there raised the possibility that the Pennsylvania attack was a copycat crime.
The gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old truck driver from the nearby town of Bart, was bent on killing young girls as a way of "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago" when he was a boy, Miller said.
Miller refused to say what that grudge was.
Roberts was not Amish and appeared to have nothing against the Amish community, Miller said. Instead, Miller said, he apparently picked the school because it was close by, there were girls there, and it had little or no security.
Miller said Roberts was apparently preparing for a long siege, arming himself with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, a 12-gauge shotgun and a rifle, along with a bag of about 600 rounds of ammunition, two cans of smokeless powder, two knives and a stun gun on his belt. He also had rolls of tape, various tools and a change of clothes.
Roberts had left several rambling notes to his wife and three children that Miller said were "along the lines of suicide notes." The gunman also called his wife during the siege by cell phone to tell her he was getting even for some long-ago offense, according to Miller.
From the suicide notes and telephone calls, it was clear Roberts was "angry at life, he was angry at God," Miller said. And it was clear from interviews with his co-workers at the dairy that his mood had darkened in recent days and he had stopped chatting and joking around with fellow employees and customers, the officer said.
Miller said that Roberts had been scheduled to take a random drug test on Monday. But the officer said it was not clear what role that may have played in the attack.
Miller said investigators were looking into the possibility the attack may have been related to the death of one of Roberts' own children. According to an obituary, Roberts and his wife, Marie, lost a daughter shortly after she was born in 1997.
As rescue workers and investigators tromped over the surrounding farmland, looking for evidence around this tiny village about 55 miles west of Philadelphia, dozens of people in traditional plain Amish clothing watched – the men in light-colored shirts, dark pants and broad-brimmed straw farmer's hats, the women in bonnets and long dark dresses.
Reporters were kept away from the school after the shooting, and the Amish were reluctant to speak with the media, as is their custom.
The victims were members of the Old Order Amish. Lancaster County is home to some 20,000 Old Order Amish, who eschew automobiles, electricity, computers, fancy clothes and most other modern conveniences, live among their own people, and typically speak a German dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch.
Bob Allen, a clerk at a bookstore in the Amish country tourist town of Intercourse, said residents see the area as being safe and the Amish as peaceful people. "It just goes to show there's no safe place. There's really no such thing," he said.
The shooting took place at the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School, a neat white building set amid green fields, with a square white horse fence around the schoolyard. The school had about 25 to 30 students, ages 6 to 13.
According to investigators, Roberts walked his children to the school bus stop, then backed his truck up to the Amish school, unloaded his weapons and several pieces of lumber, and walked in around 10 a.m. He released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with babies, Miller said.
He barricaded the doors with two-by-fours two-by-sixes nailed into place, piled-up desks and flexible plastic ties, made the remaining girls line up along a blackboard, and tied their feet together with wire ties and plastic ties, Miller said.
The teacher and another adult at the school fled to a farmhouse nearby, and someone there called 911 to report a gunman holding students hostage.
Roberts apparently called his wife around 11 a.m., saying he was taking revenge for an old grudge, Miller said. Moments later, Roberts told a dispatcher he would open fire on the children if police did not back away from the building. Within seconds, troopers heard gunfire. They smashed the windows to get inside, and found his body.
Miller said he had no immediate evidence that the victims were sexually assaulted.
Killed were two students, and a female teacher's aide who was 15 or 16 years old, authorities said.
No one answered the door at Roberts' small, one-story home on Tuesday afternoon. Children's toys were strewn on the porch and in the yard.
A family spokesman, Dwight LeFever, read a short statement from Roberts' wife that said, in part, "Our hearts are broken, our lives are shattered, and we grieve for the innocence and lives that were lost today. Above all, please pray for the families who lost children and please pray too for our family and children."
The shootings were disturbingly similar to an attack last week at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., where a man singled out several girls as hostages in a school classroom and then killed one of them and himself. Authorities said the man in Colorado sexually molested the girls.
"If this is some kind of a copycat, it's horrible and of concern to everybody, all law enforcement," said Monte Gore, undersheriff of Park County, Colo.
Miller, though, said he believed the Pennsylvania attack was not a copycat crime: "I really believe this was about this individual and what was going on inside his head."
On Friday, a school principal was shot to death in Cazenovia, Wis. A 15-year-old student, described as upset over a reprimand, was charged with murder.
The Pennsylvania attack was the deadliest school shooting since a teenager went on a rampage last year on an Indian reservation in Red Lake, Minn., killing 10 people in all, including five students, a teacher, a security guard and himself.
Nationwide, the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., remains the deadliest school shooting, with 15 dead, including the two teenage gunmen.
In Pennsylvania's insular Amish country, the outer world has intruded on occasion. In 1999, two Amish men were sent to jail for buying cocaine from a motorcycle gang and selling it to young people in their community.
There were four murders in Lancaster County in 2005, including the killings of a non-Amish couple who were shot to death in their Lititz home in November by their daughter's 18-year-old boyfriend.
Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services consulting firm in Cleveland, said the Colorado and Pennsylvania crimes underscore the lesson that no school is automatically safe from an attack.
"These incidents can happen to a one-classroom schoolhouse to a large urban school," he said. "The only thing that scares me more than an armed intruder in a school is school and safety officials who believe it can't happen here."
AP National Writer
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Doc: 00010149 DB: research–d–2006–4 Date: Tue Oct 3 04:49:09 2006
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aD8KH28181 10-03-2006 04:49:09* BC-Amish School-Grieving Town:In Pennsylva
aD8KH5U200 10-03-2006 09:00:56 BC-Amish School-Grieving Town, 1st Ld-Writ
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In Pennsylvania's Amish country, hamlet struck by tragedy despairs over lost innocence
By ADAM GELLER
AP National Writer
NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) – It's barely a town – a country crossing is more like it. Not much to it, really, except for a Thursday-night auction hall, a spring-fed swimming pool and a few homes framed by cornfields.
But those who live atop the little rise here have always felt a strong sense of place. Until Monday, when gunfire shattered their solitude, this was a place, they say, that danced with children's voices.
"You could hear them laughing, shouting, playing baseball," Ron Doutrich recalled, digging his hands into his jeans and gazing out across the road, to where the steeple of a little Amish school peeks over the cornstalks.
Now, Doutrich and others wonder: Will the joy that once filled this little hollow ever return?
"It's innocence lost," said Jim Davis, a pastor at nearby Calvary Monument Bible Church. "Wherever people are, evil can reside."
If one could believe that evil exempts certain places, then this would seem the ideal place to come. It's not just that it is peaceful, which it is, or that it is quiet or pretty. It is that this place – with its horses-and-buggies and women in bonnets – seems to have preserved a sense of gentleness, so easily submerged in the coarseness of modern life.
To some extent, says Doutrich, who has lived among the Amish his whole life, all is not as ideal as it might seem. People here have problems, too.
But each time he watches the Amish working together to erect barns and schools, he appreciates the community they have forged, he said.
The little school seemed to embody much of what people appreciate about their way of life here. It is a simple place, a tiny cinderblock structure, plain as could be. But the children who reached it on scooters and by walking through the fields were as animated and curious as their parents were stoic. Doutrich recalls that about 10 days ago, a hot air balloon landed in the field across from his house. Within minutes, nearly 50 people – nearly all of them children – had gathered around, laughing and pointing.
On Monday the classroom down the hill was silent, and the schoolyard filled with police cruisers. The rising moon competed for sky with four news helicopters.
Doutrich is sure it can't stay that way. The Amish are resilient, he says, and will move past the school shooting by telling themselves it was God's will. But Davis is not so sure.
People, of whatever faith, are bound to question how such a terrible thing could have befallen this hamlet and it's people. And the answers, he says, won't be easy to come by.
"I think the basic question people are asking right now is, God, why have you forsaken us?" said Davis, whose church opened its doors Monday night to offer counseling to those who are grieving. "What we have to do is allow people to ask the question."
AP National Writer
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Doc: 00010958 DB: research–d–2006–4 Date: Tue Oct 3 09:00:56 2006
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*** Version history. (* this story, F final, S semifinal) ***
aD8KH28181 10-03-2006 04:49:09 BC-Amish School-Grieving Town:In Pennsylva
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BC-Amish School-Grieving Town, 1st Ld-Writethru,0531
In Pennsylvania's Amish country, hamlet struck by tragedy despairs over lost innocence
Eds: SUBS grafs 3-4, to clarify location of school.
By ADAM GELLER
AP National Writer
NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) – It's barely a town – a country crossing is more like it. Not much to it, really, except for a Thursday-night auction hall, a spring-fed swimming pool and a few homes framed by cornfields.
But those who live atop the little rise here have always felt a strong sense of place. Until Monday, when gunfire shattered their solitude, this was a place, they say, that danced with children's voices.
"You could hear them laughing, shouting, playing baseball," Ron Doutrich recalled, digging his hands into his jeans and gazing down the road, to where the steeple of a little Amish school peeks over the cornstalks.
Now, Doutrich and others wonder: Will the joy that once filled that little hollow ever return?
"It's innocence lost," said Jim Davis, a pastor at nearby Calvary Monument Bible Church. "Wherever people are, evil can reside."
If one could believe that evil exempts certain places, then this would seem the ideal place to come. It's not just that it is peaceful, which it is, or that it is quiet or pretty. It is that this place – with its horses-and-buggies and women in bonnets – seems to have preserved a sense of gentleness, so easily submerged in the coarseness of modern life.
To some extent, says Doutrich, who has lived among the Amish his whole life, all is not as ideal as it might seem. People here have problems, too.
But each time he watches the Amish working together to erect barns and schools, he appreciates the community they have forged, he said.
The little school seemed to embody much of what people appreciate about their way of life here. It is a simple place, a tiny cinderblock structure, plain as could be. But the children who reached it on scooters and by walking through the fields were as animated and curious as their parents were stoic. Doutrich recalls that about 10 days ago, a hot air balloon landed in the field across from his house. Within minutes, nearly 50 people – nearly all of them children – had gathered around, laughing and pointing.
On Monday the classroom down the hill was silent, and the schoolyard filled with police cruisers. The rising moon competed for sky with four news helicopters.
Doutrich is sure it can't stay that way. The Amish are resilient, he says, and will move past the school shooting by telling themselves it was God's will. But Davis is not so sure.
People, of whatever faith, are bound to question how such a terrible thing could have befallen this hamlet and it's people. And the answers, he says, won't be easy to come by.
"I think the basic question people are asking right now is, God, why have you forsaken us?" said Davis, whose church opened its doors Monday night to offer counseling to those who are grieving. "What we have to do is allow people to ask the question."
AP National Writer
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Doc: 00011076 DB: research–d–2006–4 Date: Tue Oct 3 09:32:32 2006
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*** Version history. (* this story, F final, S semifinal) ***
aD8KH28181 10-03-2006 04:49:09 BC-Amish School-Grieving Town:In Pennsylva
aD8KH5U200 10-03-2006 09:00:56 BC-Amish School-Grieving Town, 1st Ld-Writ
aD8KH6CS00 10-03-2006 09:32:32*F BC-Amish School-Grieving Town, 2nd Ld-Writ
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BC-Amish School-Grieving Town, 2nd Ld-Writethru,0531
In Pennsylvania's Amish country, hamlet struck by tragedy despairs over lost innocence
Eds: SUBS penultimate graf to fix typo, its sted it's.
By ADAM GELLER
AP National Writer
NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) – It's barely a town – a country crossing is more like it. Not much to it, really, except for a Thursday-night auction hall, a spring-fed swimming pool and a few homes framed by cornfields.
But those who live atop the little rise here have always felt a strong sense of place. Until Monday, when gunfire shattered their solitude, this was a place, they say, that danced with children's voices.
"You could hear them laughing, shouting, playing baseball," Ron Doutrich recalled, digging his hands into his jeans and gazing down the road, to where the steeple of a little Amish school peeks over the cornstalks.
Now, Doutrich and others wonder: Will the joy that once filled that little hollow ever return?
"It's innocence lost," said Jim Davis, a pastor at nearby Calvary Monument Bible Church. "Wherever people are, evil can reside."
If one could believe that evil exempts certain places, then this would seem the ideal place to come. It's not just that it is peaceful, which it is, or that it is quiet or pretty. It is that this place – with its horses-and-buggies and women in bonnets – seems to have preserved a sense of gentleness, so easily submerged in the coarseness of modern life.
To some extent, says Doutrich, who has lived among the Amish his whole life, all is not as ideal as it might seem. People here have problems, too.
But each time he watches the Amish working together to erect barns and schools, he appreciates the community they have forged, he said.
The little school seemed to embody much of what people appreciate about their way of life here. It is a simple place, a tiny cinderblock structure, plain as could be. But the children who reached it on scooters and by walking through the fields were as animated and curious as their parents were stoic. Doutrich recalls that about 10 days ago, a hot air balloon landed in the field across from his house. Within minutes, nearly 50 people – nearly all of them children – had gathered around, laughing and pointing.
On Monday the classroom down the hill was silent, and the schoolyard filled with police cruisers. The rising moon competed for sky with four news helicopters.
Doutrich is sure it can't stay that way. The Amish are resilient, he says, and will move past the school shooting by telling themselves it was God's will. But Davis is not so sure.
People, of whatever faith, are bound to question how such a terrible thing could have befallen this hamlet and its people. And the answers, he says, won't be easy to come by.
"I think the basic question people are asking right now is, God, why have you forsaken us?" said Davis, whose church opened its doors Monday night to offer counseling to those who are grieving. "What we have to do is allow people to ask the question."
Associated Press Writer
With BC-Amish School-Shooting
AP Photo PAMA106
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Gunman in Amish school shooting described as 'ordinary' man, dedicated father
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By MARK SCOLFORO
Associated Press Writer
GEORGETOWN, Pa (AP) – The gunman who stormed a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday was an ordinary man and a devoted father and showed few signs of trouble in the days before the attack, according to several people who knew him.
Neighbors and family members saw no indication of problems that would lead 32-year-old Charles Carl Roberts IV to open fire on a dozen young girls.
"Absolutely not," said Lois Fiester, a relative of Roberts who was standing outside the family's modest ranch house. "They're a fine Christian family. It's ironic and it's heartbreaking."
When the shooting stopped, three of the girls were dead. At least seven others were wounded, some critically. And Roberts had killed himself.
State police hinted that Roberts was motivated by a childhood grudge, but they refused to divulge details, citing concern for other people involved.
Investigators also said they were looking into the possibility the attack may have been related to the death of one of Roberts' own children. According to an obituary, Roberts and his wife lost a daughter shortly after she was born in 1997.
Another neighbor, Dorothy Rineer, 83, said Roberts' wife had grown up in the neighborhood. Roberts, a truck driver who worked the night shift picking up milk from farms, also came from southeastern Lancaster County, she said.
"He was just an ordinary person," she said.
State police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said it was clear from interviews with co-workers at the dairy that Roberts' mood had darkened in recent days and he had stopped chatting and joking around with employees and customers.
Land O'Lakes, based in Arden Hills, Minn., issued a statement confirming that Roberts was employed as a truck driver and assigned to Northwest Food Products, a wholly owned Land O'Lakes subsidiary.
No one answered the door at the Roberts' home Monday.
Firewood and children's toys, including two play guns, were on the porch. In the living room, visible through the front door, was a plaque reading "God Bless This House" and exercise equipment. A sand box and trampoline were in the back yard.
In a statement released to reporters, Marie Roberts called her husband "loving, supportive and thoughtful."
"He was an exceptional father," she said. "He took the kids to soccer practice and games, played ball in the backyard and took our 7-year-old daughter shopping. He never said no when I asked him to change a diaper."
Josh Zook, an Amish man who lives three doors down, said: "I have no reason to think anything negative about him. It's just horrible."
Zook was still waiting to hear whether one of his own relatives had been a victim in the attack. "I just want to go up there with a bulldozer and bulldoze that school down," he said.
AP National Writer
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aD8KGPUI80 10-02-2006 19:22:49* BC-Being Amish:Being Amish: A life apart,
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Being Amish: A life apart, away from violence, close to the land
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By DEBORAH HASTINGS
AP National Writer
They set themselves apart from nearly all modern things – electricity, automobiles, movies, television and video games. Most of all, they abhor violence.
But in the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country, an outsider barged through the door of a one-room schoolhouse and shot to death three girls. And when he did, he brought violence to a place that considers it evil.
"I don't even know if I could begin to comprehend how this might affect those people," said Steve Scott, an Amish expert at Elizabethtown College, about 30 miles west of the tiny hamlet in southern Lancaster County where Monday's shootings occurred.
"The Amish believe that Christ taught we are not to return evil for evil," said Scott. Even when faced with something as heinous as losing a child to an execution-style shooting, "they are taught to turn the other cheek."
Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 31-year-old truck driver who lived in the area, carried a shotgun and a handgun into a rural schoolhouse, state police said. Then he lined the girls against the blackboard, tied them together by their feet, and shot them in the head, said Jeffrey Miller, commissioner of the state police.
Three girls died in the classroom. Seven others, some severely wounded, were rushed to nearby hospitals.
"The Amish are solid members of this community," Miller said, then faltered. After a moment, he continued. "They didn't deserve this. No one deserves this."
Also known as Anabaptists, the Amish are a Christian denomination that separate themselves for a variety of religious reasons. They do not serve in the military, draw Social Security or accept other forms of government assistance. Old Order Amish, the most conservative and most prevalent in states including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, have attained a certain notoriety for their horse-drawn carriages with modern-day reflector triangles on the back, and handmade wares and foods they sell to tourists.
Life comes from the land – mostly crop farming and dairy farming. In all things, piety and plainness are emphasized. Women wear long dresses of solid fabric, with aprons in white or black and cloth cap or bonnet. Men dress in dark pants, suspenders and vest, with a broad-rimmed hat. Along with English, they speak a German dialect called Pennsylvania Dutch or Pennsylvania German.
They began arriving in Lancaster County around 1730, and the community numbers about 55,000 in Pennsylvania today. Their separation is often attributed to the literal interpretation of New Testament chapters – including II Corinthians and Romans. One of the most popular is II Corinthians 6:14: "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"
The Amish are an offshoot of the Mennonites, who fled from Switzerland to Germany under persecution for refusing to join the military and for not believing in infant baptism. They split from the Mennonites in 1693, mostly because of the Amish practice of shunning.
To be shunned meant expulsion from the community for breaching religious guidelines. All have all communication and contact is cut off, even among families. Someone who joins the faith, but then denounces it and leaves, for example, would be shunned.
When members of the community die, they are buried in wooden coffins; women in all white and men in all black. Bodies are embalmed, but undertakers do not apply makeup. Funerals are held in the victim's home, and the dead are delivered to the cemetery in a horse-drawn carriage. A hymn is read, but there is no singing.
Like other religions, rules have softened over time, necessitated by commerce and need. There are Amish telephone booths, for instance, that can be used in emergencies. Some dairies sporadically use generator electricity to cool milk containers so it can be sold according to market regulations. Some hire taxis to take them to town.
But at their core, the Amish believe life is based on faith. And belief in the world to come, where there is no violence.
AP National Writer
AP Photos PALAN101, PALAN112, PAPHQ101 and PAMR104
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*** Version history. (* this story, F final, S semifinal) ***
aD8KGPUI80 10-02-2006 19:22:49 BC-Being Amish:Being Amish: A life apart,
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Being Amish: A life apart, away from violence, close to the land
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%photo(AP Photos PALAN101, PALAN112, PAPHQ101 and PAMR104%)
By DEBORAH HASTINGS
AP National Writer
They set themselves apart from nearly all modern things – electricity, automobiles, movies, television and video games. Most of all, they abhor violence.
But in the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country, an outsider barged through the door of a one-room schoolhouse and shot to death three girls. And when he did, he brought violence to a place that considers it evil.
"I don't even know if I could begin to comprehend how this might affect those people," said Steve Scott, an Amish expert at Elizabethtown College, about 30 miles west of the tiny hamlet in southern Lancaster County where Monday's shootings occurred.
"The Amish believe that Christ taught we are not to return evil for evil," said Scott. Even when faced with something as heinous as losing a child to an execution-style shooting, "they are taught to turn the other cheek."
Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old truck driver who lived in the area, carried a shotgun and a handgun into a rural schoolhouse, state police said. Then he lined the girls against the blackboard, tied them together by their feet, and shot them in the head, said Jeffrey Miller, commissioner of the state police.
Three girls died in the classroom. Seven others, some severely wounded, were rushed to nearby hospitals.
"The Amish are solid members of this community," Miller said, then faltered. After a moment, he continued. "They didn't deserve this. No one deserves this."
Also known as Anabaptists, the Amish are a Christian denomination that separate themselves for a variety of religious reasons. They do not serve in the military, draw Social Security or accept other forms of government assistance. Old Order Amish, the most conservative and most prevalent in states including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, have attained a certain notoriety for their horse-drawn carriages with modern-day reflector triangles on the back, and handmade wares and foods they sell to tourists.
Life comes from the land – mostly crop farming and dairy farming. In all things, piety and plainness are emphasized. Women wear long dresses of solid fabric, with aprons in white or black and cloth cap or bonnet. Men dress in dark pants, suspenders and vest, with a broad-rimmed hat. Along with English, they speak a German dialect called Pennsylvania Dutch or Pennsylvania German.
They began arriving in Lancaster County around 1730, and the community numbers about 55,000 in Pennsylvania today. Their separation is often attributed to the literal interpretation of New Testament chapters – including II Corinthians and Romans. One of the most popular is II Corinthians 6:14: "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"
The Amish are an offshoot of the Mennonites, who fled from Switzerland to Germany under persecution for refusing to join the military and for not believing in infant baptism. They split from the Mennonites in 1693, mostly because of the Amish practice of shunning.
To be shunned meant expulsion from the community for breaching religious guidelines. All have all communication and contact is cut off, even among families. Someone who joins the faith, but then denounces it and leaves, for example, would be shunned.
When members of the community die, they are buried in wooden coffins; women in all white and men in all black. Bodies are embalmed, but undertakers do not apply makeup. Funerals are held in the victim's home, and the dead are delivered to the cemetery in a horse-drawn carriage. A hymn is read, but there is no singing.
Like other religions, rules have softened over time, necessitated by commerce and need. There are Amish telephone booths, for instance, that can be used in emergencies. Some dairies sporadically use generator electricity to cool milk containers so it can be sold according to market regulations. Some hire taxis to take them to town.
But at their core, the Amish believe life is based on faith. And belief in the world to come, where there is no violence.
AP National Writer
AP Photos PALAN101, PALAN112, PAPHQ101 and PAMR104
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Being Amish: A life apart, away from violence, close to the land
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%photo(AP Photos PALAN101, PALAN112, PAPHQ101 and PAMR104%)
By DEBORAH HASTINGS
AP National Writer
They set themselves apart from nearly all modern things – electricity, automobiles, movies, television and video games. Most of all, they abhor violence.
But in the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country, an outsider barged through the door of a one-room schoolhouse and shot to death three girls. And when he did, he brought violence to a place that considers it evil.
"I don't even know if I could begin to comprehend how this might affect those people," said Steve Scott, an Amish expert at Elizabethtown College, about 30 miles west of the tiny hamlet in southern Lancaster County where Monday's shootings occurred.
"The Amish believe that Christ taught we are not to return evil for evil," said Scott. Even when faced with something as heinous as losing a child to an execution-style shooting, "they are taught to turn the other cheek."
Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old truck driver who lived in the area, carried a shotgun and a handgun into a rural schoolhouse, state police said. Then he lined the girls against the blackboard, tied them together by their feet, and shot them in the head, said Jeffrey Miller, commissioner of the state police.
Three girls died in the classroom. Seven others, some severely wounded, were rushed to nearby hospitals.
"The Amish are solid members of this community," Miller said, then faltered. After a moment, he continued. "They didn't deserve this. No one deserves this."
Also known as Anabaptists, the Amish are a Christian denomination that separate themselves for a variety of religious reasons. They do not serve in the military, draw Social Security or accept other forms of government assistance. Old Order Amish, the most conservative and most prevalent in states including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, have attained a certain notoriety for their horse-drawn carriages with modern-day reflector triangles on the back, and handmade wares and foods they sell to tourists.
Life comes from the land – mostly crop farming and dairy farming. In all things, piety and plainness are emphasized. Women wear long dresses of solid fabric, with aprons in white or black and cloth cap or bonnet. Men dress in dark pants, suspenders and vest, with a broad-rimmed hat. Along with English, they speak a German dialect called Pennsylvania Dutch or Pennsylvania German.
They began arriving in Lancaster County around 1730, and the community numbers about 55,000 in Pennsylvania today. Their separation is often attributed to the literal interpretation of New Testament chapters – including II Corinthians and Romans. One of the most popular is II Corinthians 6:14: "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"
The Amish are an offshoot of the Mennonites, who fled from Switzerland to Germany under persecution for refusing to join the military and for not believing in infant baptism. They split from the Mennonites in 1693, mostly because of the Amish practice of shunning.
To be shunned meant expulsion from the community for breaching religious guidelines. All communication and contact is cut off, even among families. Someone who joins the faith, but then denounces it and leaves, for example, would be shunned.
When members of the community die, they are buried in wooden coffins; women in all white and men in all black. Bodies are embalmed, but undertakers do not apply makeup. Funerals are held in the victim's home, and the dead are delivered to the cemetery in a horse-drawn carriage. A hymn is read, but there is no singing.
Like other religions, rules have softened over time, necessitated by commerce and need. There are Amish telephone booths, for instance, that can be used in emergencies. Some dairies sporadically use generator electricity to cool milk containers so it can be sold according to market regulations. Some hire taxis to take them to town.
But at their core, the Amish believe life is based on faith. And belief in the world to come, where there is no violence.
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NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) – A gunman killed "a number" of people at a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, state police said.
The shooter was among the dead, state police Cpl. Ralph Striebig said.
"There are a number of people dead," Striebig said. "The exact number I do not know yet."
Associated Press Writer
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Milk truck driver kills at least 3 girls at Pa. Amish school after barricading them inside
Eds: ADDS details from news conference. Will be led. AP Video.
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By MARK SCOLFORO
Associated Press Writer
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NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) – A 32-year-old milk truck driver took about a dozen girls hostage in a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday, barricaded the doors with boards and killed at least three girls and apparently himself, authorities said.
It was the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week, and similar to an attack just days earlier at a school in Colorado.
The gunman, identified as Charles Carl Roberts IV, was inside for over half an hour and had barred the doors with 2x4s with the girls inside, State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said. By the time officers broke windows to get in, three girls and the gunman were dead, Miller said.
Lancaster County Coroner G. Gary Kirchner initially said six people were killed, but later said he wasn't certain. At least seven people were taken to hospitals, including at least three girls in critical condition with gunshot wounds.
Roberts walked into the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School with a shotgun and handgun, then released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with infants before barring the doors, Miller said.
The girls were lined up along a blackboard and their feet were bound, he said.
A teacher called police around 10:30 a.m. and reported that a gunman was holding students hostage.
About 11 a.m., Roberts apparently called his wife from a cell phone, saying he was "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago," Miller said. "It seems as though he wanted to attack young, female victims."
Moments later, Roberts told a dispatcher he would open fire on the children if police didn't back away from the building. Troopers heard gunfire in the building seconds later.
The school has about 25 to 30 students in all, ages 6 to 13.
"It seems as though he wanted to attack young, female victims," Miller said. He released no further details about that what the grudge Roberts mentioned could have involved.
The school is among farmlands just outside Nickel Mines, a tiny village about 55 miles west of Philadelphia. Hours after the shootings, about three dozen people in traditional Amish clothing, hats and bonnets stood near the small building, surrounded by a white board fence, as investigators walked in line through fields searching for evidence.
Associated Press Writer
AP Graphic AMISH SCHOOL SHOOTING
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Milk truck driver kills at least 3 girls at Pa. Amish school after barricading them inside
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AP Graphic AMISH SCHOOL SHOOTING
AP Photos
By MARK SCOLFORO
Associated Press Writer
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NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) – A 32-year-old milk truck driver took about a dozen girls hostage in a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday, barricaded the doors with boards and killed at least three girls and apparently himself, authorities said.
It was the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week, and similar to an attack just days earlier at a school in Colorado.
The gunman, identified as Charles Carl Roberts IV, was inside for over half an hour and had barred the doors with 2x4s with the girls inside, State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said. By the time officers broke windows to get in, three girls and the gunman were dead, Miller said. Seven others were taken to hospitals, three in critical condition.
"It appears that when he began shooting these victims, the victims were shot execution style in the head," Miller said.
Roberts had walked into the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School with a shotgun and handgun, then released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three other women with infants before barring the doors with the girls inside, Miller said.
The girls were lined up along a blackboard, Miller said. "He had wire ties with him and flex ties, and he began to tie the girls' feet together," Miller said.
A teacher was able to call police around 10:30 a.m. and reported that a gunman was holding students hostage.
About 11 a.m., Roberts apparently called his wife from a cell phone, saying he was "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago," Miller said. "It seems as though he wanted to attack young, female victims."
Moments later, Roberts told a dispatcher he would open fire on the children if police didn't back away from the building. Troopers heard gunfire in the building seconds later.
The school has about 25 to 30 students in all, ages 6 to 13.
"It seems as though he wanted to attack young, female victims," Miller said. He released no further details about that what the grudge Roberts mentioned could have involved.
Lancaster County Coroner G. Gary Kirchner initially said six people were killed, but later said he wasn't certain about that number.
At least seven people were taken to hospitals, including at least three girls, ages 6-12, who were admitted to Lancaster General Hospital in critical condition with gunshot wounds, spokesman John Lines said.
The small school, surrounded by a white board fence, sits among farmlands just outside Nickel Mines, a tiny village about 55 miles west of Philadelphia.
Hours after the attack, about three dozen people in traditional Amish clothing, broad-brimmed hats and bonnets stood near the small schoolhouse as investigators walked in a line through fields searching for evidence.
The shootings were disturbingly similar to an attack last week at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., where a man took several girls hostage in a school classroom and then killed one of them and himself. Authorities said the man sexually molested the girls.
"If this is some kind of a copycat, it's horrible and of concern to everybody, all law enforcement," said Monte Gore, undersheriff of Park County, Colo.
"On behalf of Park County and our citizens and our sheriff's office, our hearts go out to that school and the community," he said.
Nationwide, the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., remains the deadliest school shooting, claiming the lives of 15 people, including the two teenage gunmen. On Friday, a school principal was gunned down in Cazenovia, Wis. A 15-year-old student, described as upset over a reprimand, was charged with murder in the killing.
Associated Press Writer
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Gunman kills 3, then self at 1-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania
Eds: UPDATES details on doors barricaded with desks, quote from state police commissioner, CLARIFY it is not clear who made the 911 call, UPDATES with expert comment, Amish not talking with reporters. No pickup.
%photo(AP Photos%)
By MARK SCOLFORO
Associated Press Writer
NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) – A milk-truck driver carrying two guns and some kind of grudge stormed a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday, sent the boys and adults outside, barricaded the doors with two-by-fours, and then opened fire on a dozen girls, killing three of them before committing suicide.
It was the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week, and it sent shock waves through Lancaster County's bucolic Amish country, a picturesque landscape of horse-drawn buggies, green pastures and neat-as-a-pin farms, where violent crime is virtually nonexistent.
Seven other victims were taken to hospitals. Most were badly wounded; most had been shot, execution-style, at point-blank range, after being lined up along the chalkboard, their feet bound with wire and plastic ties, authorities said.
The attack bore similarities to a deadly school shooting last week in Bailey, Colo., and authorities there raised the possibility that the Pennsylvania attack was a copycat crime.
The gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 31-year-old truck driver from the nearby town of Bart, was bent on killing young girls as a way of "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago," State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said. Miller gave no details on what the grudge was.
Roberts was not Amish and apparently had no particular grudge against the Amish community, Miller said. Instead, Miller said, he apparently picked the school because it was close by, there were girls there, and it had little or no security.
Roberts had left several rambling notes to his wife and three children that Miller said were "along the lines of suicide notes." He also called his wife during the siege by cell phone to tell her he was getting even for a long-ago offense, according to Miller.
As rescue workers and investigators tromped over the surrounding farmland, looking for evidence around this tiny village about 55 miles west of Philadelphia, dozens of people in traditional plain Amish clothing watched – the men in light-colored shirts, dark pants and broad-brimmed straw farmer's hats, the women in bonnets and long dark dresses.
Reporters were kept away from the school after the shooting, and the Amish were reluctant to speak with the media, as is their custom.
The victims were members of the Old Order Amish. Lancaster County is home to some 20,000 Old Order Amish, who eschew automobiles, electricity, computers, fancy clothes and most other modern conveniences, live among their own people, and typically speak a German dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch.
The shooting took place at the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School, a neat white building set amid green fields, with a square white horse fence around the schoolyard. The school had about 25 to 30 students, ages 6 to 13.
According to investigators, Roberts dropped his children off at the school bus stop, then pulled up at the Amish school in his truck and walked in around 10 a.m. with a shotgun, an automatic handgun and several pieces of lumber. He released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with babies, Miller said.
He barricaded the doors with two-by-fours, two-by-sixes and piled-up desks, made the remaining girls line up along a blackboard, and tied their feet together with wire ties and flexible plastic ties, Miller said.
The teacher and another adult at the school fled to a farmhouse nearby, and someone there called 911 to report a gunman holding students hostage.
Roberts apparently called his wife around 11 a.m., saying he was taking revenge for an old grudge, Miller said. Moments later, Roberts told a dispatcher he would open fire on the children if police didn't back away from the building. Within seconds, troopers heard gunfire. They smashed the windows to get inside, and found his body.
The names and ages of the dead were not immediately released.
"Very, very traumatic situation. Some of my troopers, actually one of the girls died in the arms of one of our troopers," Miller said.
Three girls – 13, 8 and 6 – were in critical condition at the Penn State Children's Hospital in Hershey. The rest of the wounded were taken to other hospitals in Pennsylvania and Delaware; their condition was not immediately disclosed.
No one answered the door at Roberts' small, one-story home on Tuesday afternoon. Children's toys were strewn on the porch and in the yard.
The shootings were disturbingly similar to an attack last week at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., where a man singled out several girls as hostages in a school classroom and then killed one of them and himself. Authorities said the man in Colorado sexually molested the girls.
"If this is some kind of a copycat, it's horrible and of concern to everybody, all law enforcement," said Monte Gore, undersheriff of Park County, Colo. "On behalf of Park County and our citizens and our sheriff's office, our hearts go out to that school and the community."
William Pollack, an expert in school violence at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., and a psychology professor at the Harvard Medical School, said the Pennsylvania attack probably wasn't a copycat crime. Instead, Roberts probably had a grudge against women or girls that had been building for months or years, and he was spurred to act by the Colorado shootings.
"Seeing someone else enact it, certainly that would open up the gates," Pollack said.
On Friday, a school principal was shot to death in Cazenovia, Wis. A 15-year-old student, described as upset over a reprimand, was charged with murder.
The Pennsylvania attack was the deadliest school shooting since a teenager went on a rampage last year on an Indian reservation in Red Lake, Minn., killing 10 people in all, including five students, a teacher, a security guard and himself.
Nationwide, the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., remains the deadliest school shooting, with 15 dead, including the two teenage gunmen.
In Pennsylvania's insular Amish country, the outer world has intruded on occasion. In 1999, two Amish men were sent to jail for buying cocaine from a motorcycle gang and selling it to young people in their community.
There were four murders in Lancaster County in 2005, including the killings of a non-Amish couple were shot to death in their Lititz home in November by their daughter's 18-year-old boyfriend.
Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services consulting firm in Cleveland, said the Colorado and Pennsylvania crimes underscore the lesson that no school is automatically safe from an attack.
"These incidents can happen to a one-classroom schoolhouse to a large urban school," he said. "The only thing that scares me more than an armed intruder in a school is school and safety officials who believe it can't happen here."
He said that belief is often stronger in rural, suburban and private schools.
"When you go to rural and private schools, the first obstacle you run into is the 'It can't happen here' mentality," he said. "People have the perception of we're not like whatever big city they're near."
AP National Writer
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Doc: 00008818 DB: research–d–2006–4 Date: Mon Oct 2 20:03:12 2006
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*** Version history. (* this story, F final, S semifinal) ***
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Being Amish: A life apart, away from violence, close to the land
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%photo(AP Photos PALAN101, PALAN112, PAPHQ101 and PAMR104%)
By DEBORAH HASTINGS
AP National Writer
They set themselves apart from nearly all modern things – electricity, automobiles, movies, television and video games. Most of all, they abhor violence.
But in the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country, an outsider barged through the door of a one-room schoolhouse and shot to death three girls. And when he did, he brought violence to a place that considers it evil.
"I don't even know if I could begin to comprehend how this might affect those people," said Steve Scott, an Amish expert at Elizabethtown College, about 30 miles west of the tiny hamlet in southern Lancaster County where Monday's shootings occurred.
"The Amish believe that Christ taught we are not to return evil for evil," said Scott. Even when faced with something as heinous as losing a child to an execution-style shooting, "they are taught to turn the other cheek."
Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old truck driver who lived in the area, carried a shotgun and a handgun into a rural schoolhouse, state police said. Then he lined the girls against the blackboard, tied them together by their feet, and shot them in the head, said Jeffrey Miller, commissioner of the state police.
Three girls died in the classroom. Seven others, some severely wounded, were rushed to nearby hospitals.
"The Amish are solid members of this community," Miller said, then faltered. After a moment, he continued. "They didn't deserve this. No one deserves this."
Also known as Anabaptists, the Amish are a Christian denomination that separate themselves for a variety of religious reasons. They do not serve in the military, draw Social Security or accept other forms of government assistance. Old Order Amish, the most conservative and most prevalent in states including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, have attained a certain notoriety for their horse-drawn carriages with modern-day reflector triangles on the back, and handmade wares and foods they sell to tourists.
Life comes from the land – mostly crop farming and dairy farming. In all things, piety and plainness are emphasized. Women wear long dresses of solid fabric, with aprons in white or black and cloth cap or bonnet. Men dress in dark pants, suspenders and vest, with a broad-rimmed hat. Along with English, they speak a German dialect called Pennsylvania Dutch or Pennsylvania German.
They began arriving in Lancaster County around 1730, and the community numbers about 55,000 in Pennsylvania today. Their separation is often attributed to the literal interpretation of New Testament chapters – including II Corinthians and Romans. One of the most popular is II Corinthians 6:14: "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"
The Amish are an offshoot of the Mennonites, who fled from Switzerland to Germany under persecution for refusing to join the military and for not believing in infant baptism. They split from the Mennonites in 1693, mostly because of the Amish practice of shunning.
To be shunned meant expulsion from the community for breaching religious guidelines. All communication and contact is cut off, even among families. Someone who joins the faith, but then denounces it and leaves, for example, would be shunned.
When members of the community die, they are buried in wooden coffins; women in all white and men in all black. Bodies are embalmed, but undertakers do not apply makeup. Funerals are held in the victim's home, and the dead are delivered to the cemetery in a horse-drawn carriage. A hymn is read, but there is no singing.
Like other religions, rules have softened over time, necessitated by commerce and need. There are Amish telephone booths, for instance, that can be used in emergencies. Some dairies sporadically use generator electricity to cool milk containers so it can be sold according to market regulations. Some hire taxis to take them to town.
But at their core, the Amish believe life is based on faith. And belief in the world to come, where there is no violence.
Associated Press Writer
AP Graphic AMISH SCHOOL SHOOTING
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Doc: 00008814 DB: research–d–2006–4 Date: Mon Oct 2 20:02:38 2006
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Gunman kills at least 3, then self at 1-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania
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AP Graphic AMISH SCHOOL SHOOTING
By MARK SCOLFORO
Associated Press Writer
NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) – It was a scene seemingly frozen in time: a one-room schoolhouse nestled amid a picturesque landscape of horse-drawn buggies, green pastures and well-tended farms.
The Amish people of bucolic Lancaster County left behind the conveniences and problems of the modern world to create a sanctuary where the living is simple and violent crime is virtually nonexistent.
But they could not keep out a milk-truck driver carrying three guns and a childhood grudge Monday as he stormed a tiny Amish school and opened fire on a dozen girls, killing three of them before committing suicide.
At least seven other victims were critically wounded, state police said.
It was the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week, and it could not have happened in a more unlikely place.
After taking over the school, the gunman sent the boys and adults outside and barricaded the doors with two-by-fours. Most of the victims were shot, execution-style, at point-blank range, after being lined up along the chalkboard, their feet bound with wire and plastic ties, authorities said.
"This is a horrendous, horrific incident for the Amish community. They're solid citizens in the community. They're good people. They don't deserve ... no one deserves this," State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said.
The attack bore similarities to a deadly school shooting last week in Bailey, Colo., and authorities there raised the possibility that the Pennsylvania attack was a copycat crime.
The gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old truck driver from the nearby town of Bart, was bent on killing young girls as a way of "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago" when he was a boy, Miller said.
Miller refused to say what that grudge was.
Roberts was not Amish and appeared to have nothing against the Amish community, Miller said. Instead, Miller said, he apparently picked the school because it was close by, there were girls there, and it had little or no security.
Miller said Roberts was apparently preparing for a long siege, arming himself with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, a 12-gauge shotgun and a rifle, along with a bag of about 600 rounds of ammunition, two cans of smokeless powder, two knives and a stun gun on his belt. He also had rolls of tape, various tools and a change of clothes.
Roberts had left several rambling notes to his wife and three children that Miller said were "along the lines of suicide notes." The gunman also called his wife during the siege by cell phone to tell her he was getting even for some long-ago offense, according to Miller.
From the suicide notes and telephone calls, it was clear Roberts was "angry at life, he was angry at God," Miller said. And it was clear from interviews with his co-workers at the dairy that his mood had darkened in recent days and he had stopped chatting and joking around with fellow employees and customers, the officer said.
Miller said that Roberts had been scheduled to take a random drug test on Monday. But the officer said it was not clear what role that may have played in the attack.
Miller said investigators were looking into the possibility the attack may have been related to the death of one of Roberts' own children. According to an obituary, Roberts and his wife, Marie, lost a daughter shortly after she was born in 1997.
As rescue workers and investigators tromped over the surrounding farmland, looking for evidence around this tiny village about 55 miles west of Philadelphia, dozens of people in traditional plain Amish clothing watched – the men in light-colored shirts, dark pants and broad-brimmed straw farmer's hats, the women in bonnets and long dark dresses.
Reporters were kept away from the school after the shooting, and the Amish were reluctant to speak with the media, as is their custom.
The victims were members of the Old Order Amish. Lancaster County is home to some 20,000 Old Order Amish, who eschew automobiles, electricity, computers, fancy clothes and most other modern conveniences, live among their own people, and typically speak a German dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch.
Bob Allen, a clerk at a bookstore in the Amish country tourist town of Intercourse, said residents see the area as being safe and the Amish as peaceful people. "It just goes to show there's no safe place. There's really no such thing," he said.
The shooting took place at the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School, a neat white building set amid green fields, with a square white horse fence around the schoolyard. The school had about 25 to 30 students, ages 6 to 13.
According to investigators, Roberts walked his children to the school bus stop, then backed his truck up to the Amish school, unloaded his weapons and several pieces of lumber, and walked in around 10 a.m. He released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with babies, Miller said.
He barricaded the doors with two-by-fours two-by-sixes nailed into place, piled-up desks and flexible plastic ties, made the remaining girls line up along a blackboard, and tied their feet together with wire ties and plastic ties, Miller said.
The teacher and another adult at the school fled to a farmhouse nearby, and someone there called 911 to report a gunman holding students hostage.
Roberts apparently called his wife around 11 a.m., saying he was taking revenge for an old grudge, Miller said. Moments later, Roberts told a dispatcher he would open fire on the children if police did not back away from the building. Within seconds, troopers heard gunfire. They smashed the windows to get inside, and found his body.
Miller said he had no immediate evidence that the victims were sexually assaulted.
Killed were two students, and a female teacher's aide who was 15 or 16 years old, authorities said.
No one answered the door at Roberts' small, one-story home on Tuesday afternoon. Children's toys were strewn on the porch and in the yard.
A family spokesman, Dwight LeFever, read a short statement from Roberts' wife that said, in part, "Our hearts are broken, our lives are shattered, and we grieve for the innocence and lives that were lost today. Above all, please pray for the families who lost children and please pray too for our family and children."
The shootings were disturbingly similar to an attack last week at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., where a man singled out several girls as hostages in a school classroom and then killed one of them and himself. Authorities said the man in Colorado sexually molested the girls.
"If this is some kind of a copycat, it's horrible and of concern to everybody, all law enforcement," said Monte Gore, undersheriff of Park County, Colo.
Miller, though, said he believed the Pennsylvania attack was not a copycat crime: "I really believe this was about this individual and what was going on inside his head."
On Friday, a school principal was shot to death in Cazenovia, Wis. A 15-year-old student, described as upset over a reprimand, was charged with murder.
The Pennsylvania attack was the deadliest school shooting since a teenager went on a rampage last year on an Indian reservation in Red Lake, Minn., killing 10 people in all, including five students, a teacher, a security guard and himself.
Nationwide, the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., remains the deadliest school shooting, with 15 dead, including the two teenage gunmen.
In Pennsylvania's insular Amish country, the outer world has intruded on occasion. In 1999, two Amish men were sent to jail for buying cocaine from a motorcycle gang and selling it to young people in their community.
There were four murders in Lancaster County in 2005, including the killings of a non-Amish couple who were shot to death in their Lititz home in November by their daughter's 18-year-old boyfriend.
Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services consulting firm in Cleveland, said the Colorado and Pennsylvania crimes underscore the lesson that no school is automatically safe from an attack.
"These incidents can happen to a one-classroom schoolhouse to a large urban school," he said. "The only thing that scares me more than an armed intruder in a school is school and safety officials who believe it can't happen here."
AP National Writer
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In Pennsylvania's Amish country, hamlet struck by tragedy despairs over lost innocence
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By ADAM GELLER
AP National Writer
NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) – It's barely a town – a country crossing is more like it. Not much to it, really, except for a Thursday-night auction hall, a spring-fed swimming pool and a few homes framed by cornfields.
But those who live atop the little rise here have always felt a strong sense of place. Until Monday, when gunfire shattered their solitude, this was a place, they say, that danced with children's voices.
"You could hear them laughing, shouting, playing baseball," Ron Doutrich recalled, digging his hands into his jeans and gazing down the road, to where the steeple of a little Amish school peeks over the cornstalks.
Now, Doutrich and others wonder: Will the joy that once filled that little hollow ever return?
"It's innocence lost," said Jim Davis, a pastor at nearby Calvary Monument Bible Church. "Wherever people are, evil can reside."
If one could believe that evil exempts certain places, then this would seem the ideal place to come. It's not just that it is peaceful, which it is, or that it is quiet or pretty. It is that this place – with its horses-and-buggies and women in bonnets – seems to have preserved a sense of gentleness, so easily submerged in the coarseness of modern life.
To some extent, says Doutrich, who has lived among the Amish his whole life, all is not as ideal as it might seem. People here have problems, too.
But each time he watches the Amish working together to erect barns and schools, he appreciates the community they have forged, he said.
The little school seemed to embody much of what people appreciate about their way of life here. It is a simple place, a tiny cinderblock structure, plain as could be. But the children who reached it on scooters and by walking through the fields were as animated and curious as their parents were stoic. Doutrich recalls that about 10 days ago, a hot air balloon landed in the field across from his house. Within minutes, nearly 50 people – nearly all of them children – had gathered around, laughing and pointing.
On Monday the classroom down the hill was silent, and the schoolyard filled with police cruisers. The rising moon competed for sky with four news helicopters.
Doutrich is sure it can't stay that way. The Amish are resilient, he says, and will move past the school shooting by telling themselves it was God's will. But Davis is not so sure.
People, of whatever faith, are bound to question how such a terrible thing could have befallen this hamlet and its people. And the answers, he says, won't be easy to come by.
"I think the basic question people are asking right now is, God, why have you forsaken us?" said Davis, whose church opened its doors Monday night to offer counseling to those who are grieving. "What we have to do is allow people to ask the question."
Associated Press Writer
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NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) – Two more children died Tuesday morning of wounds from the shootings at an Amish schoolhouse, raising the death toll to five girls plus the gunman who apparently was spurred by a two-decades-old grudge.
The toll from the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week rose twice within a matter of hours Tuesday with the deaths of one girl at Christiana Hospital in Delaware and a 7-year-old girl at Penn State Children's Hospital in Hershey.
Five additional girls were hospitalized.
The Bush administration on Monday called for a school violence summit to be held next week with education and law enforcement officials to discuss possible federal action to help communities prevent violence and deal with its aftermath.
State police spokeswoman Linette Quinn said the two girls who died early Tuesday had suffered "very severe injuries, but the other ones are coming along very well."
One girl died about 1 a.m., and the 7-year-old girl died about 4:30 a.m.
"Her parents were with her," hospital spokeswoman Amy Buehler Stranges said of the 7-year-old. "She was taken off life support and she passed away shortly after."
Authorities said the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, wrote what authorities described as suicide notes, took guns and ammunition and went to a nearby one-room schoolhouse, where he opened fire on several girls and took his own life, authorities said.
Roberts, who was from nearby Bart Township and was not Amish, did not appear to be targeting the Amish and apparently chose the school because he was bent on killing young girls as a way of "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago," said state police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller.
"This is a horrendous, horrific incident for the Amish community. They're solid citizens in the community. They're good people. They don't deserve ... no one deserves this," Miller said.
The names of the dead were not immediately released.
Of the injured, a 6-year-old girl remained in critical condition and a 13-year-old girl was in serious condition at Penn State Children's Hospital, spokeswoman Buehler Stranges said. She said the names of the children were not being released.
Three girls, ages 8, 10 and 12, were flown to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where they were out of surgery but remained in critical condition, spokeswoman Peggy Flynn said.
Roberts brought with him supplies necessary for a lengthy siege, including three guns, a stun gun, two knives, a pile of wood and a bag with 600 rounds of ammunition, police said. He also had a change of clothing, toilet paper, bolts and hardware and rolls of clear tape.
He released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with infants, barred the doors with desks and wood and secured them with nails, bolts and flexible plastic ties. He then made the girls line up along a blackboard and tied their feet together.
The teacher and another adult fled to a nearby farmhouse, and authorities were called at about 10:30 a.m. Miller said Roberts apparently called his wife from a cell phone at around 11 a.m., saying he was taking revenge for an old grudge. Miller declined to say what the grudge could have been.
"It seems as though he wanted to attack young, female victims," Miller said.
Miller told NBC's "Today" that Roberts lost a daughter "approximately three years ago" and that that may have been a factor in the shooting.
He said a teacher had to run to a farm house to call police because there wasn't one at the school, in keeping with Amish custom.
Parents refused to fly in planes – again in keeping with Amish tradition – and had to be driven to see their children at hospitals, Miller told "Today." Some were taken to the wrong hospitals in the confusion, Miller said.
From the suicide notes and telephone calls, it was clear Roberts was "angry at life, he was angry at God," and co-workers said his mood had darkened in recent days, Miller said.
In a statement released to reporters, the gunman's wife, Marie Roberts, called her husband "loving, supportive and thoughtful."
"He was an exceptional father," she said. "He took the kids to soccer practice and games, played ball in the backyard and took our 7-year-old daughter shopping. He never said no when I asked him to change a diaper."
"Our hearts are broken, our lives are shattered, and we grieve for the innocence and lives that were lost today," she said. "Above all, please pray for the families who lost children and please pray too for our family and children."
The attack bore similarities to a deadly school shooting last week in Bailey, Colo., but Miller said he believed the Pennsylvania attack was not a copycat crime. "I really believe this was about this individual and what was going on inside his head," he said.
On Friday, a school principal was shot to death in Cazenovia, Wis. A 15-year-old student, described as upset over a reprimand, was charged with murder.
Associated Press Writer
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QUARRYVILLE, Pa. (AP) – A man who laid siege to a one-room Amish schoolhouse told his wife shortly before opening fire that he had molested young children decades ago and left a note saying he had "dreams of molesting again," state police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said Tuesday.