Amish school shooting
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CNN reported
on the shooting.
The Amish school shooting occurred on the morning of Monday, October
2, 2006, when
a gunman took hostages and eventually killed five girls (aged 7–13) and
himself at West
Nickel Mines School, a one-room
Amish
schoolhouse in Nickel
Mines, a village in Bart
Township of Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania, United
States.[1][2][3][4][5]
Police report that the gunman was Charles
Carl Roberts IV,[5][6]
a 32-year-old milk-tank truck driver who lived nearby.
[edit]
Shooting
Roberts entered the school at
approximately 9:51 a.m. EDT with a shotgun,
a handgun,
wires, chains, nails, and flexible plastic ties which he used to bind the arms
and legs of the hostages,
and several stout wooden boards which he used to barricade
himself inside.[7]
Police found a length of two-by-six wooden board with ten pairs of metal
eyehooks, presumably to secure the ten hostages. Provisions for an extended
overnight stay, such as candles, toilet tissue, and a change of clothes were
found at the scene. Two tubes of sexual lubricant were also later discovered at
the scene, and Roberts indicated to his wife over the phone that he had dreams
about molesting children, but police have found no signs that any molestation
occurred[5].
He ordered the hostages to line up against the chalkboard,
and sent away from the classroom a pregnant woman, three parents with infants
and all fifteen male students. One female student escaped: nine-year-old Emma
Fisher (whose two older sisters stayed inside).[8]
The nine-year old, who had just started to learn English, left with the male
students because she did not understand the gunman's orders. She had been
sitting beside her brother and followed him out when he left. The gunman, a
father of three children (two boys and a girl), remained inside the school house
with the remaining ten female students. The school teacher, Emma Mae Zook,[9]
contacted the police upon escaping at approximately 10:36 a.m.[7]
The first police officers arrived approximately nine minutes later and attempted
to communicate with Roberts via the PA
system in their cruisers.[7]
The 911 call transcript shows Roberts ordered the police that if they didn't
pull back within two seconds, the children would be dead and unfortunately, he
began firing when they did not comply.[10]
Police broke in through the windows
when shots were heard.[2]
The gunman killed five girls and himself. The oldest girl, 13-year-old Marian
Fisher, appealed to Roberts to shoot her first, in an effort to spare the
younger girls, according to her younger sister who survived. The younger sister,
Barbie, appealed to him to shoot her next. She was wounded in the hand, leg, and
shoulder.[11]
Three died at the scene and two more died early the next morning, with five more
girls left in critical condition. Three girls were admitted to Penn
State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, four to Children's
Hospital of Philadelphia and one to Christiana Hospital in Newark,
Delaware, state police said.[12]
At least five girls remain hospitalized, three in critical
condition and two upgraded to serious
condition as of Tuesday, October
3, 2006.[13][5]
Reports have stated that most of the
girls were shot "execution-style"
in the back of the head.[12][14]
One student was shot in the back and the shoulder; she is expected to recover.[citation
needed] The ages of the victims ranged from six to thirteen.[5]
Roberts was last seen by his wife at
8:45 a.m. when they walked their children to the bus stop before leaving. When
his wife returned home at 11:00 a.m., she discovered four suicide notes — one
addressed to his wife, and one to each of his children. Roberts reportedly
contacted his wife while still in the schoolhouse and stated that he had
molested two young female relatives (between the ages of 3 and 5) twenty years
ago, and had been daydreaming about molesting again. One note Roberts left
indicated his despondency over his daughter who died shortly (roughly 20
minutes) after birth nine years earlier, and cryptically stated that he had
"been having dreams for the past couple of years about doing what he did 20
years ago and he has dreams of doing them again", according to State Police
Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller, apparently alluding to his later phone admission
to sexually molesting two family members when he was younger.
On October
4, 2006, the
two relatives whom Roberts said he molested 20 years ago told police that no
such abuse had ever happened, throwing a new layer of mystery over the gunman's
motive and mental state during the shooting.[15]
Miller said there was no evidence any
of the Amish children had been molested.[16]
Roberts was a resident of nearby Georgetown,
another unincorporated
area of Bart
Township.[17]
On October
12, 2006, the
West Nickel Mines School fell to the bulldozer; the school had been boarded up
since the shooting occurred. The Amish plan to leave a quiet pasture where the
schoolhouse once stood. [18]
According to the Washington Post,
Police and coroner accounts of the children's wounds differed dramatically.
Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller said Roberts shot his
victims in the head at close range, with 17 or 18 shots fired in all, including
the one he used to take his own life as police stormed into the school through
the windows. But Janice Ballenger, deputy coroner in Lancaster County, Pa., told
The Washington Post in an interview that she counted at least two dozen bullet
wounds in one child alone before asking a colleague to continue for her.
Inside the school, Ballenger said,
"there was not one desk, not one chair, in the whole schoolroom that was
not splattered with either blood or glass. There were bullet holes everywhere,
everywhere." When questioned, a state police spokeswoman said that she
could not immediately explain the discrepancy.[19]
