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Amish killer gave 2sec warning
10/10/2006 18:51 - (SA)
Lancaster - The Amish schoolhouse gunman threatened to kill his hostages "in two seconds" if police did not leave the property, according to a transcript of a call to an emergency line released on Tuesday.
"Don't try to talk me out of it, get 'em all off the property now," Charles Carl Roberts IV told a Lancaster county police emergency dispatcher in a call that came in at 10:55 on October 2.
The dispatcher then asked Roberts to stay on the phone so he could be transferred to state police. Roberts replied: "No, you tell them and that's it. Right now or they're dead in two seconds."
The dispatcher sought to transfer the call and told Roberts, "Hang on a minute," Roberts replied again: "Two seconds, that's it." Roberts then hung up.
Roberts - a 32-year-old milk truck driver and father of three - stormed the West Nickel Mines Amish School on October 2 armed with a shotgun, a handgun and a stun gun. He sent the adults and boys out and bound the 10 remaining girls at the blackboard.
"I just took, uh, 10 girls hostage and I want everybody off the property or, or else," Roberts told the emergency dispatcher. Ran to neighbouring farm He ended up killing five girls and wounding five others before killing himself.
Teacher Emma Mae Zook, 20, and her mother - who was visiting the schoolhouse - darted out of the building after seeing Roberts's gun. They ran to a neighbouring farm that had a telephone.
According to the transcript, first released to The Associated Press, the initial emergency call about the siege came in to Lancaster county emergency authorities at 10:35 from that farmer, Amos Smoker, according to the transcript.
"There's a, there's a guy in the school with a gun," Smoker said.
After determining the location, the dispatcher transferred the call to state police, who handle law enforcement for the area. Call from Roberts's wife
Marie Roberts, the gunman's wife, called the Lancaster county dispatch centre three minutes after her husband. She had received a call from him from the schoolhouse.
"My name is Marie Roberts, my husband just called me and said that he wasn't coming home and that the police were there and that he left notes for myself and my children and I'm worried that he tried to commit suicide somewhere," she said, according to the transcript.
Marie Roberts then told the dispatcher that her husband had not revealed his location.
The dispatcher replied: "OK, and, and all he said to you was that..."
"I'm not coming home, um, he was upset about something that had happened 20 years ago, and he said he was getting revenge for it, I don't think he was getting revenge on another person, I'm worried that maybe he was trying to commit suicide," Marie Roberts said. Concern about suicide
After being transferred to state police, Marie Roberts repeated her concern about suicide. She also described what some of her husband's notes said.
"Like, the thought of not my children, not seeing them grow up, like, let's see, uh, I'm not even sure, here it is, my daughter Abigail I want you to know that I love you and I'm sorry I couldn't be here to watch you grow up, that's how the notes start," she said.
The tapes were transcribed by district attorney Don Totaro, the only person in the county prosecutor's office to hear them. He declined to describe the tone of any of the callers' voices, assistant district attorney Susan Moyer said.
Totaro's office refused to release the audiotapes themselves.
"It would really be only salacious to release an audio version at this time," Moyer said.
- AP
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