Shooting in Amish School in Lancaster County-3 little girls dead-many critical

[grammy2_1]

I heard about it while at work this morning when family started calling me because they knew how this would affect me and that I could very well know the families of the victims.
:(
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/02/amish.shooting/index.html
My heart is just broken over this!!!
I know many among the Amish there and have been past that very school
before!!! OMG, this is so tragic!
Such peaceful people as the Amish are, and something as sick as this happens???
They don't hurt anyone!!!!

I cannot believe this...
Its so horrible and senseless and tragic!!!!
I pray for my Amish friends and all the Amish...especially those directly touched by this tragedy.

[Willow]

How sad. :(

[Fred12]

What is this world coming to? :( :mad: :( :mad:

[Jolie Rouge]

4 dead in Amish school shooting in PA
By MARK SCOLFORO, Associated Press Writer
Mon Oct 2, 7:59 PM ET

NICKEL MINES, Pa. - A milk-truck driver carrying three guns and a childhood 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 people before committing suicide.

At least seven other victims were critically wounded, authorities said.

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.

Most of the victims 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. Two young students were killed, along with a female teacher's aide who was slightly older than the students, state police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller 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 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 long-ago hurt 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.

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.

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 and 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 didn't 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 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."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061002/ap_on_re_us/amish_school_shooting;_ylt=AiYB8IS_vfjh_fzLKjeI2my s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-


In pictures : Amish school shooting at BBC, Oct 02 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/5400616.stm ( pictures of the area - NOT crime scene/graphic photos )

[Jolie Rouge]

[ double post - sorry ]

[Quaker_Parrots]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061003/ap_on_re_us/amish_school_shooting


NICKEL MINES, Pa. - A fourth child died Tuesday of wounds from the shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County.

The 7-year-old girl died about 4:30 a.m. at Penn State Children's Hospital in Hershey, hospital spokeswoman Amy Buehler Stranges said.

"Her parents were with her," Buehler Stranges said. "She was taken off life support and she passed away shortly after."


Excuse my poor language, but I want to know how the hell the man could have justified killing little girls that could have in no way shape or form had anything to do with something that happened to him 20 years ago?

[ladyfoob]

This world is so crazy. So many killings and every other crime you can think of. But, it just breaks my heart when children are killed. How could anyone just do something like this? Those children were so inocent and pure. :(

[lassss]

There is nothing justified about it at all :( Apparantly something happened to this man 20 years ago that invlolved a young girl and the police think that he had a *hatred* of young girls and something snapped that made him want to kill young girls. What also came to light is that he lost a child but I dunno if that had something to do with the horrible crime. Another thing that the press is not really saying is that some of the girls that were shot are related (sisters, cousins etc). This is so sad..I work about 25 miles from where this happened and I saw so many helicopters pass over yesterday :(



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061003/ap_on_re_us/amish_school_shooting




Excuse my poor language, but I want to know how the hell the man could have justified killing little girls that could have in no way shape or form had anything to do with something that happened to him 20 years ago?

[stresseater]

The man alledgedly molested two little girls(family members) and had thoughts of doing it again. Among the things he had with him in the school was KY jelly. He probably planned on doing to them what happened to the girls in the shooting last week in Colorado. That's probably where he got the idea. Fortunatly the cops stormed the place when he started shooting and he didn't have time to finish what he started. SICK F#$%%^. :mad: :mad:

[Jolie Rouge]

Site of Amish schoolhouse shooting razed
By MARTHA RAFFAELE, Associated Press Writer

NICKEL MINES, Pa. - Ten days after the Amish schoolhouse shootings, a demolition crew using heavy equipment tore down the bloodstained building Thursday and obliterated nearly all traces of the place where five girls were killed.

Only a bare patch of earth was left behind, and it was planted with grass seed, so that eventually even the footprint of the one-room schoolhouse will be gone, too.

Any kind of plaque or memorial is unlikely. Members of the plain-living Amish community said it would be too showy and would attract too many visitors.

"They do not want to make it a tourist attraction," said the 27-year-old brother of two of the 15 boys sent out of the schoolhouse by the gunman before the shooting.

"It's definitely a little heart-wrenching to see it go down, but it sort of finishes things off," said the Amish man, who like most members of the community did not want to be identified in any news accounts.

The Amish are known for constructing buildings by hand, without the aid of modern technology, but for this job they arranged for private contractors with heavy equipment to end a painful chapter for their community.

Construction lights glared in the mist as a large backhoe tore into the overhang of the school's porch before daybreak, then knocked down the bell tower and toppled the walls. Within 15 minutes, the building was reduced to a pile of rubble. By 7:30 a.m., the debris was gone, hauled away by dump trucks.

The schoolhouse, built in 1976, had been boarded up since the killings, with classes moved to a farm nearby.

The Amish planned to turn the spot where the schoolhouse stood into pasture. There are 10 other Amish school buildings around the community.

Herman Bontrager, a Mennonite businessman serving as a spokesman for the Amish said there was widespread feeling that the building should be removed. "Especially for the children, but not only for the children," he said.

Twenty to 30 people, many of them in Amish dress, gathered to watch as the schoolhouse was leveled.

The destruction of the West Nickel Mines Amish School came a week after the funerals of the five girls killed by gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV. Roberts wounded five other girls and killed himself as police closed in.

____

Associated Press writer Mark Scolforo contributed to this story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061012/ap_on_re_us/amish_school_shooting;_ylt=AgiqZcVbaPPOLbA1UCHegt8 EtbAF;_ylu=X3oDMTBhZDJjOXUyBHNlYwNtdm5ld3M-

[Jolie Rouge]

The Amish in Nickel Mines have been deluged with contributions. Here's how they're handling the money.
By Susannah Meadows - Newsweek
Updated: 6:37 p.m. CT Oct 12, 2006

Oct. 12, 2006 - Since the Oct. 2 shooting of 10 Amish schoolgirls, sympathetic people have responded with an outpouring of donations to help the community in Nickel Mines, Pa., pay hospital bills and for a new school. Since last week, three Mennonite groups with close ties to the Amish have been receiving those donations. Now the Nickel Mines Accountability Committee has been organized to administer the money. Herman Bontrager, normally the CEO of Goodville Mutual Insurance Company, is a volunteer spokesman for the committee. He talked to NEWSWEEK's Susannah Meadows from his office in New Holland, Pa.

NEWSWEEK: How much money has been donated so far?
Herman Bontrager: Over $1 million already. But we don’t really know how many funds might be out there.

Many of the hospitals caring for the girls have offered now to waive their bills. One hospital contacted one of the [Amish] leaders saying that they would not be charging for services rendered. Other hospitals followed suit.

What is the response of the community?

The Amish response was, “We don’t expect you to do that.” But the hospital said, “We need to do this for ourselves.”

Will that leave a lot of money left over?

What we don’t know is what [the hospitals' offers] mean for sure. Is it just the hospital billings? Does that include other services, physicians, the anesthesiologist? The other thing we don’t know is prognosis. For the long-term costs that are possible for some of these girls, we’re not assuming that those are all forgiven.

Where will the money go?

For medical expenses for victims—fatalities and ones who are injured. Short-term and long-term care. Transportation and lodging for family members [visiting their hospitalized children]. It could go toward making schools or homes handicap-accessible.

Are the Amish going to accept any outside offers to build a new school?
They have way more offers than they can use to build a new school. They did have outside offers to demolish the school, which they accepted. But I think the Amish are going to want to build this themselves. I think it will be important for them to know that they have rebuilt this school themselves.

Where will any extra money end up?

The Amish have been clear from step one. They don’t want to deny the blessing of people. But if there’s extra money, they’re saying in no way will we use this money to benefit the Amish community outside of the needs that arise from this tragedy. They might make contributions to services providers who assist people who do not have their own means to pay—hospital charity funds, for instance.

The Amish have said they’d like some of the money to go to the family of the killer.

There was one bank account set up specifically for his family. In addition to that, the accountability committee, on behalf of the church leadership, has said that if there are needs beyond that fund, they want to make sure that some of the money that comes in designated for Nickel Mines victims [goes to the killer's family]. Nickel Mines victims include [that] family, in their definition. There are conversations about what the family's needs are, such as scholarship funds for the children. The committee will contribute as it becomes clear what the needs are.


Are the Amish aware of how people have been inspired by the community’s generosity toward the killer's family?

I’ve heard them talk about that. They’re recognizing that this is an event that affects a lot of people both from grief and from its learning potential. I’m sure that many of them feel that deeply and are very very grateful for it. But an Amish person would be very reluctant to talk about "We’re teaching the world something." What they would say is, "We just did what we think we need to do as people of faith. Our actions are more important than our words."

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15241580/site/newsweek/?GT1=8618



How You Can Help ?
Donations for the Amish can be sent to the following groups:

• Mennonite Disaster Service:
http://mds.mennonite.net
• Mennonite Central Committee:
http://www.mcc.org
• Anabaptist Foundation:
http://www.afweb.org

[Jolie Rouge]

New Amish school rises near murder scene
By MARK SCOLFORO, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 18 minutes ago

NICKEL MINES, Pa. - Members of the community are raising a new Amish schoolhouse a few hundred yards from the spot where a gunman shot five girls to death in October.

The new building will have just one room, like the torn-down school where the massacre took place, but will be more secure, with more sophisticated locks and a location reachable only by a private drive, said John Coldiron, a township official.

An Amish-owned business is building the school, but Coldiron said the entire community is pitching in. The building already had a roof and windows by Thursday, about two weeks after construction began. "Every elder of the church, they're all out there working, hammering nails," Coldiron said.

Some workers are using power tools, even though the Amish shun most modern conveniences.

The old West Nickel Mines Amish School was torn down using heavy equipment 10 days after milk truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV shot the girls and committed suicide.

The new school is within sight of the old location, which is now an empty field bordered with no-trespassing signs.

It is expected to be finished by the end of February, with classes there beginning in March, said one of two Amish men who were at the site Thursday. Students have been attending classes in a garage since the shooting.

Neighbors said they were glad to see the progress. "I'm happy that they're moving on and they can rebuild. But I guess it's not a surprise considering how they acted when it happened — they forgave right away," said Jessica Moyer, a mother of two.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070118/ap_on_re_us/amish_school_rebuilding