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Amish reel at deadly shooting
03/10/2006 07:43 - (SA)
Nickel Mines - A milk-truck driver carrying three guns and a childhood grudge stormed a one-room Amish schoolhouse, sent the boys and adults outside, barricaded the doors with wood planks, 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 America'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," said Miller.
Bent on killing young girls
Miller told Fox News late on Monday that a fourth girl had died at Hershey Medical Center. However, a spokesperson for the hospital, Amy Buehler Stranges, said that there had been no change in the condition of the three girls at that hospital.
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 wasn't 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, Colorado, 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 cellphone to tell her he was getting even for some long-ago offence, 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 colleagues 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.
Reporters kept away
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 90km 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.
- SAPA
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