History > 2006 > USA > Gun violence (IV)

A copy of the list of materials that the state police say Charles C. Roberts IV

gathered for his siege at the West Nickel Mines Amish School.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images        NYT        October 4, 2006

Police Describe Gunman’s Plan in School Siege        NYT        3.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/us/04children.html

Convicted Sniper Admits to 2002 Slaying

October 28, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:06 a.m. ET
The New York Times

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- Convicted Washington-area sniper Lee Boyd Malvo tearfully confessed to police that he and John Allen Muhammad were responsible for the 2002 killing of a 60-year-old man on a golf course, Tucson authorities said Friday.

A contrite Malvo said he was sorry for the family of Jerry Taylor, said Detective Benjamin Jimenez of the Tucson Police Department.

''He welled up a few times in tears during the interview,'' Jimenez said.

Malvo spoke to police in Maryland for two hours Thursday after he received immunity from prosecution, Tucson Capt. Bill Richards said. Malvo said the shooting took place while he and Muhammad were in the area visiting Muhammad's older sister, Richards said.

Tucson police had long sought to speak with Malvo about the March 19, 2002, death of Taylor, 60, who died from a single gunshot fired from long range as he practiced chip shots at the golf course. The case had never been conclusively tied to Muhammad and Malvo.

Jimenez said Malvo lay in the bushes and shot Taylor as he was retrieving a golf ball. According to Malvo, the two decided to shoot someone on the golf course after conducting surveillance in the desert, Jimenez said.

Taylor's daughter, Cheryll Witz, said Malvo's confession brings closure for her and will allow her to move forward. She said she wrote Malvo a five-page letter in June imploring him to talk to Tucson detectives.

''I needed to know. I really need to forgive him. I do believe that he was brainwashed and I do truly believe that he was made to kill my father,'' she said.

Tucson police Chief Richard Miranda said Tucson detectives were participating in the Washington-area sniper investigation and noticed similarities between those cases and Taylor's.

Richards said Malvo agreed to testify against Muhammad if Arizona authorities bring charges. He said police are still investigating and have not submitted the case to prosecutors.

Muhammad and Malvo were arrested for 10 killings and three woundings in the Washington, D.C., area during three weeks in October 2002. They were accused of roaming the area with a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle that they fired from the trunk of a Chevrolet Caprice at random victims.

Malvo is serving a life term in Virginia for sniper shootings. He is in Maryland awaiting sentencing for six sniper killings in Montgomery County.

The two are suspects in earlier shootings that year in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland and Washington state, and news reports have linked them to shootings in Florida, Texas and California.

Both were convicted of separate Virginia killings in 2003. Muhammad was sentenced to death while Malvo was given a life term.

They were sent to Maryland last year to stand trial for six killings in Montgomery County. Muhammad was convicted in May. Malvo, who pleaded guilty, is to be sentenced Nov. 9.

    Convicted Sniper Admits to 2002 Slaying, NYT, 28.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Sniper-Shootings.html

No solution in sight for U.S. gun violence

Mon Oct 23, 2006 8:19 AM ET
Reuters
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It's an American way of death. More than 30,000 people die from gunshot wounds every year, through murder, suicide and accidents.

That is an average of 82 a day, and prospects for reducing the toll are dim.

The debate between gun control advocates and the pro-gun lobby was reignited briefly this month by four school shootings between September 26 and October 9.

In one, a man carrying a pistol, a shotgun and 600 rounds of ammunition shot 10 girls execution-style at an Amish school in Pennsylvania, killing five of them, and then killed himself. In another, a 13-year-old took an AK-47 assault rifle to his school in Missouri, pointed it at administrators and other students and fired it into a ceiling.

At a hastily arranged White House Conference on School Safety on October 10, panelists covered topics ranging from metal detectors and school bullies to the value of religious beliefs and good communication between parents and schools.

But the word "gun" was not mentioned until a plucky teenager pointed out to a panel moderated by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that the common factor was easy access to high-powered firearms. President George W. Bush and his wife Laura Bush attended separate parts of the conference but avoided mention of guns.

"The Bush administration is in complete denial regarding the catalytic role that guns play in school violence," said Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center, which like other gun control advocates was not invited to the conference.

"How is it even possible to have a discussion about preventing school shootings without talking about guns?"

Justice department figures put the number of guns in private hands at more than 200 million -- more than any other country -- and swelling by several million every year.

The annual U.S. production of pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns for the domestic civilian market has been running at between 2.6 million and more than three million for the past seven years, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives.

"The U.S. level of lethal violence is far out of line with those of other industrialized nations," said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. "The fact that most of our lethal violence involves firearms lends credence to the hypothesis that the prevalence of guns is a prime reason."

That hypothesis, widely accepted in much of the rest of the world, is hotly contested by American advocates of unfettered access to guns, led by the National Rifle Association (NRA), who say that the second amendment to the Constitution gives all law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms.

"It's not guns that kill people," the gun lovers' mantra goes, "people kill people."

GUN LOBBY SCORES WINS IN CONGRESS

The NRA wields enormous influence in Washington and traditionally backs candidates in local and national elections on the basis of their stand on one issue -- gun ownership -- regardless of their party affiliation.

Successful lobbying has led to a string of NRA of victories over its gun control adversaries. In 2004, Congress allowed a ban on assault weapons -- such as the AK47 used in the Missouri school shooting -- to lapse.

"Clearly, the past two years represent one of the most successful congressional sessions that gun owners have ever had," the NRA said in a message to its four million members this month, in advance of midterm congressional elections on November 7. "All our hard work and vital victories must be protected."

Proponents of tighter gun controls see things differently. "Congress has been in denial about gun violence ... and is moving in the wrong direction," said Joshua Horwitz, the executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. He noted that the annual death toll from gun violence in the United States is ten times the total of U.S. combat deaths, to date, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Statisticians say such comparisons are misleading but the parallel has been drawn before, most notably by then president George H.W. Bush, the present president's father, after the end of the first Gulf War.

"During the first three days of the ground offensive, more Americans were killed in some American cities than at the entire Kuwaiti front," Bush said at the time.

"Think of it, one of our brave National Guardsmen may have actually been safer in the midst of the largest armored offensive in history than he would have been on the streets of his home-town."

That was in 1991, when the U.S. murder rate, driven by turf wars between crack dealers, reached an all-time peak of 24,700, according to FBI statistics. It declined steadily in the 1990s and stood at just under 17,000 last year. Guns accounted for two thirds of the killings.

"There are signs of changing attitudes toward guns, particularly among younger Americans, said the Violence Policy Center's Rand. "But change will come slowly, over the next 20, 30 years."

    No solution in sight for U.S. gun violence, R, 23.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-10-23T121928Z_01_N20391974_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIFE-GUNS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-3

Boy and Parents Are Found Dead in Bronx Park

October 21, 2006
The New York Times
By CARA BUCKLEY

A couple and their 4-year-old son were found shot to death early yesterday in a secluded nook of the sprawling Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, apparently killed in a murder-suicide, the police said.

The couple, identified by relatives and the police as Aldrick Jarvis, 31, and his wife, Jessica Jarvis, 30, were found lying on the ground beneath trees in the southwestern part of the park about 20 feet from a burgundy Nissan Xterra.

Their child, Jacob Cartier Jarvis, was found strapped into a booster seat in the back of the Nissan, the police said, and appeared to have been shot in the face at close range. Officers found two lollipops near the vehicle’s stick shift and a blue crayon in the back seat.

The Jarvises were pronounced dead just after 8 a.m. The police said they were not looking for suspects and believed that Mr. Jarvis had shot his son and his wife before turning the gun on himself.

Gina Guadalupe, Ms. Jarvis’s sister, said that the couple had been together about 11 years but that their marriage had been strained recently.

Ms. Guadalupe and the women’s mother lived with the Jarvises in a prewar apartment building at 3191 Rochambeau Avenue, just southeast of the park and less than two miles from the crime scene.

According to Ms. Guadalupe, her sister, a physician’s assistant, had recently threatened to leave Mr. Jarvis, who was unemployed.

“She was just a very good person, she was very loving and caring,” Ms. Guadalupe said through tears. “Everybody loved her and the baby.”

Detectives were still working with forensic evidence and witnesses to piece together the chronology of the crime. But, the police said, it appeared that after the vehicle was parked, Mr. and Ms. Jarvis got out, arguing, and that he then returned to the passenger side and smashed the window, either with a gun or his fist.

The police said they had received reports of shots fired around 7:45 a.m. When officers arrived, they found the adults’ bodies at the muddy edge of a parking lot in a part of the park near the Van Cortlandt Golf Course. The bodies were in a neat line, as if the two had been facing each other when the shots were fired, according to the police.

Ms. Jarvis had been shot several times. A 9-millimeter Beretta lay between the couple, the police said, and Ms. Jarvis was face down, while Mr. Jarvis was on his back.

Two shell casings were found outside the vehicle and another two inside, the police said. Aside from splattered blood, the interior of the vehicle was pristine, the police said, and the boy was crisply dressed in carpenter jeans and brand-new white Adidas running shoes.

The shootings jarred early-morning dog-walkers and joggers, who relish the normally peaceful park.

Frank Banks, 50, said he heard two gunshots as he was walking his dog. The gunfire was followed by a 10-second pause, he said, and then one or two more shots. Mr. Banks said that about half an hour later he returned to the parking lot for his vehicle and found the area swarming with police officers.

Rosaleen Flynn, 54, who lives across the hall from the family, said she often saw them returning from the park and described Jacob as a bubbly, yet polite, boy. “They always seemed so happy, never had arguments or nothing,” Ms. Flynn said.

The family’s apartment door was festooned yesterday with decorative cobwebs and plastic spiders for Halloween. Ms. Guadalupe said the couple had been on their way to a pediatrician’s appointment. Jacob’s fifth birthday would have been Monday.

“I just miss her and I miss my nephew,” Ms. Guadalupe said.

Cassi Feldman and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

    Boy and Parents Are Found Dead in Bronx Park, NYT, 21.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/21/nyregion/21shot.html

5 in Iowa Family Slain

October 15, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:54 a.m. ET
The New York Times

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Authorities were questioning a man arrested in Illinois after his parents and three teenage sisters were found shot to death at their home in southeastern Iowa.

Shawn Bentler, 22, was arrested Saturday in Quincy, Ill., on an unrelated charge of possession of drug paraphernalia, according to the Adams County, Ill., sheriff's office.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety said Bentler is considered a suspect in the slayings, but did not disclose a motive.

Quincy is about 60 miles southeast of the family's home.

The victims were found early Saturday near Bonaparte, according to the Van Buren County sheriff's office. They were identified as Michael Bentler, 53; his wife, Sandra, 47; and their daughters Sheena, 17; Shelby, 15; and Shayne, 14.

Autopsies were planned for Sunday.

The slayings shocked residents of this tiny town, located about 145 miles southeast of Des Moines.

''The whole town knew the family,'' resident Marilyn Thomas said. ''This is only a town of 465 people.''

Thomas said she didn't see any indications of strife in the family.

The teens -- a freshman, sophomore and senior -- attended Harmony High School. School officials said they will have counselors available Monday to speak with grieving students.

    5 in Iowa Family Slain, NYT, 15.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Shooting-Deaths.html?hp&ex=1160971200&en=d35c590a03bf9878&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Amish Schoolhouse Is Razed

October 13, 2006
The New York Times
By SEAN D. HAMILL

The one-room schoolhouse where 10 girls were shot last week, built by hand three decades ago by the Amish it served, was demolished by heavy machinery yesterday in the hope of easing the community’s pain.

The Amish community had debated whether to tear down the West Nickel Mines Amish School, in Lancaster County, Pa., ever since the horror unfolded there on Oct. 2, when five of the girls were fatally wounded by Charles C. Roberts IV and the five others received serious wounds that have kept them hospitalized.

In addition to concern for the victims’ families, those considering the school’s fate “realized it could be very traumatic for the children, that it might just be too hard for the children who were in there to go back,” said Herman Bontrager, a businessman who is a friend of some Amish church leaders in the area.

The experience of last weekend, when tourists and well-wishers clogged roads trying to get a glimpse of the schoolhouse, made the decision all the easier. “This past Sunday it was just bumper-to-bumper out there,” said David Nissley, a Mennonite pastor. “They’d like to reduce the tourism it creates.”

So in the darkness early yesterday morning, out of the glare of media attention, the school was torn down. Mr. Nissley volunteered his landscaping company to reseed the site with various grasses and clover to return it to pastureland.

The Amish school district board now has to decide when and where it will build a new school. For the time being, the district’s 16 remaining students are attending classes in a nearby garage.

Offers of volunteer labor to help build a school have poured into the community, but Mr. Bontrager said he doubted that the Amish, known for their insularity and self-reliance, would accept.

“I think it would be pretty important for them to do it themselves,” he said.

    Amish Schoolhouse Is Razed, NYT, 13.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/us/13amish.html

Man Warned Police Just Before Amish Shootings

October 10, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA

The man who took 10 girls hostage last week in an Amish school in southeastern Pennsylvania called the local 911 dispatcher and threatened to kill the girls “in two seconds” unless police withdrew from around the school, according to transcripts of calls to 911, which were released today.

“Don’t try to talk me out of it — get ’em all off the property now,” Charles C. Roberts IV said to the Lancaster County emergency office, apparently after state police cars appeared at the school, which sits in an open field.

The dispatcher, evidently aware from prior calls that there was a hostage situation at the school, tried to keep the gunman on the line and to connect him with the state police to start negotiations.

“I’m going to let the state police down there — I need you to talk to them, O.K.?Can I transfer you to them?” the dispatcher said, according to the transcripts.

“No,” the gunman replied. “You tell them and that’s it. Right now, or they’re dead in two seconds.”

After refusing to speak with police, the gunman started shooting the girls, killing five and wounding five others. He died from a self-inflicted wound as police were breaking through a window of the barricaded, one-room schoolhouse.

The transcripts of the conversations, but not the actual tapes, were released today by the Lancaster County Assistant District Attorney’s office, and were posted on the website of a Philadelphia television station, NBC10, and others.

Shortly after the gunman made his threats, Marie Roberts, his wife, called 911 to report a cell phone call he had made to her, and to tell the police about suicide notes he had left at the family’s home, the transcripts show.

The dispatcher asked Ms. Roberts about what Mr. Roberts had said, and she replied: “I’m not coming home — um, he was upset about something that had happened twenty years ago, and that he was getting revenge for it. I don’t think he was getting revenge with another person. I’m worried that maybe he was trying to commit suicide.”

    Man Warned Police Just Before Amish Shootings, NYT, 10.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/us/11amishcnd.html?hp&ex=1160539200&en=725d338759f3f89d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

New Jersey Man Shoots 3 In-Laws, Killing 2 and Himself

October 9, 2006
The New York Times
By FERNANDA SANTOS

Alim Hodzic parked his pickup truck in the woods off a residential street in Manalapan, N.J., and walked to his brother-in-law’s home late Saturday with two guns, a knife and extra ammunition in his pocket, the authorities said yesterday.

He killed two relatives, injured another, and then killed himself, they said, seemingly because of a business partnership gone bad.

The first victim was Esat Astafovic, 41, the brother-in-law, whom the authorities say Mr. Hodzic shot outside the house, at the top of the dark driveway, about 11 p.m.

Once inside, Mr. Hodzic fatally shot Mr. Astafovic’s wife, Violsa, 35, and fired at Mr. Astafovic’s father, Rasim Astafovic, 74. The father remained hospitalized last night with a bullet wound to his chest, according to prosecutors and the police.

Two of the Astafovics’ four children were in the house when their parents were killed, but they were not injured, said Luis A. Valentin, the Monmouth County prosecutor. All four were in the care of other relatives last night, the authorities said.

Rasim Astafovic’s wife, Rabij, 66, was also at the home and was unharmed.

Mr. Hodzic, 53, was married to Esat Astafovic’s sister. The two men had owned a window company in New York, but the partnership ended on a sour note. The dispute involved, among other things, the purchase of a multimillion-dollar building in Brooklyn, according to the lawyer who represented Mr. Astafovic. According to Mr. Valentin and the lawyer, Mr. Astafovic won “a substantial financial reward” in August.

“There appears to have been personal animosity between the shooter and the victim,” he said yesterday at a news conference in Manalapan.

The authorities said that as Mr. Hodzic returned to his truck, he encountered a police officer who had been called to check on the vehicle, which looked as if it had been abandoned. The officer, seeing a gun in Mr. Hodzic’s hand, ordered him to drop it. Instead, Mr. Hodzic wedged it under his chin and fired a single bullet into his head, the police said.

In addition to a revolver and a semiautomatic pistol, Mr. Hodzic had a knife in a sheath and a plastic bag with ammunition in his pockets, Mr. Valentin said.

The Astafovics lived in the Millhurst section of Manalapan, in a roomy two-story house surrounded by equally spacious homes with well-manicured lawns and elaborate landscaping. The homes sit far apart, on multiacre plots of land, and residents conceded yesterday that it is not the type of neighborhood that invites interaction. If any of them knew the family, they would not say it, or say anything about them.

A lone police officer stood guard outside the home, whose lawn was encircled by yellow crime-scene tape. Early in the day, someone placed a bouquet of sunflowers at the foot of the driveway. Throughout the afternoon, people in sport utility vehicles and minivans drove by, slowing down and pointing at the house.

At Mr. Hodzic’s home on Oakland Mills Road, two and a half miles away, relatives shooed away reporters, refusing to comment.

John Holl contributed reporting.

    New Jersey Man Shoots 3 In-Laws, Killing 2 and Himself, NYT, 9.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/nyregion/09monmouth.html

Thousands ride in honor of slain student

Posted 10/8/2006 5:15 AM ET
AP
USA Today

BAILEY, Colo. (AP) — About 5,000 motorcyclists rode in a caravan in honor of the 16-year-old girl who was shot at her high school by a gunman who held her hostage.

The motorcyclists, including Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener, rode 40 miles to Platte Canyon High School from Columbine High School, the scene of the nation's worst school shooting in 1999.

It was Wegener who made the call for SWAT officers to invade a classroom where authorities said Duane Morrison, 53, took Emily Keyes and other girls hostage and molested them on Sept. 27.

Morrison shot Emily in the head after SWAT officers stormed the classroom and then shot and killed himself, authorities said. The other hostages survived.

On Saturday, bikers paid donations to take part in the ride from Columbine to Bailey. The procession was so long that the first bikers, riding two abreast, pulled into Platte Canyon High School as the last bikers left Columbine.

Money collected from the ride will go to a fund to help the girls who were taken hostage.

Dan Patino, who came up with the idea for the ride, said he was stunned by its turnout.

"There's not a lot to say," Emily's father, John-Michael Keyes, told the crowd. "This is amazing."

    Thousands ride in honor of slain student, UT, 8.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-08-standoff-benefit_x.htm

One Dead and One Hurt in Brooklyn Shootings

October 8, 2006
The New York Times
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ and ANN FARMER

Two men were wounded, one fatally, in separate shootings in Brooklyn, the police said yesterday.

Sam Smith, 24, died after being shot once in the neck and leg on Friday afternoon inside a friend’s second-floor apartment at 857 Schenck Avenue in New Lots, according to the police.

The police were called to the six-story building, part of the Boulevard Houses, about 4:50 p.m. Mr. Smith, who friends and neighbors said was unemployed, was pronounced dead on arrival at Brookdale Hospital Medical Center at 5:15 p.m., the police said.

Details of the shooting were unclear yesterday.

Mr. Smith lived on Barbey Street with relatives less than a block away.

There are no arrests and no suspects, the police said, adding that they did not have a motive for the shooting. A neighbor, Grace Rollock, 54, a school crossing guard, said she was inside her apartment when she heard one gunshot and then a few minutes later, several more.

She said she did not know the residents where the shooting occurred.

In the other shooting, a 23-year-old man was hit twice in the chest at Sullivan Place and Bedford Avenue.

The police were called at 1:05 a.m. and the man, who was not immediately identified, was taken to Kings County Hospital Center, where he was listed in critical but stable condition yesterday, the police said.

    One Dead and One Hurt in Brooklyn Shootings, NYT, 8.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/nyregion/08shooting.html

Amish Burying 5th Shooting Victim in Pa.

October 6, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:27 a.m. ET
The New York Times

GEORGETOWN, Pa. (AP) -- Horse-drawn buggies splashed along country roads in a steady, cold rain Friday as the Amish gathered for another funeral for a young victim of the schoolhouse attack.

Bearded men in black suits and women in dresses and bonnets attended services Thursday for the four other girls killed during Monday's shootings, two of them sisters.

The funeral Friday was for 12-year-old Anna Mae Stoltzfus, who was to buried at the same hilltop cemetery as her friends.

A sixth girl shot during the attack was reported in grave condition. County coroner G. Gary Kirchner said he had been contacted by a physician at Penn State Children's Hospital in Hershey who said doctors expected to take the girl off life support.

State troopers blocked off all roads into the Nickel Mines village during the funerals Thursday.

A procession of horse-drawn buggies and black carriages holding the girls' hand-sawn wooden coffins passed the home of Charles Carl Roberts IV, the 32-year-old milk truck driver who took the girls hostage, tied them up and shot them before killing himself.

''They were just little people,'' Benjamin Nieto, 57, said he watched the processions from a friend's porch. ''They never got a chance to do anything.''

The funerals Thursday were for 13-year-old Marian Fisher, 7-year-old Naomi Rose Ebersol and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7.

The girls, in white dresses made by their families, were laid to rest in graves dug by hand. Amish custom calls for simple wooden coffins, narrow at the head and feet and wider in the middle. Amish funerals are conducted in German and focus on God, not on commemorating the dead. There is no singing, but ministers read hymns and passages from the Bible and an Amish prayer book.

The attack was so traumatic that there is talk in the community that the schoolhouse may soon be razed. Many of the Amish have embraced Roberts' wife and three young children, focusing on their belief in forgiveness.

Roberts' wife, Marie, was invited to attend the funeral by the family of Marian Fisher; it was unclear whether she attended.

Donors from around the world are pledging money to help the families of the dead and wounded. Amounts ranging from $1 to $500,000 have been received and could help defray mounting medical bills.

At the behest of Amish leaders, a fund was also set up for the killer's widow and children.

Associated Press writer Mark Scolforo and photographer Carolyn Kaster contributed to this report.

    Amish Burying 5th Shooting Victim in Pa., NYT, 6.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Amish-School-Shooting.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Wisconsin lawmaker urges arming teachers

Updated 10/5/2006 9:36 PM ET
AP
USA Today

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A state lawmaker, worried about a recent string of deadly school shootings, suggested arming teachers, principals and other school personnel as a safety measure and a deterrent.

It might not be politically correct, but it has worked effectively in other countries, Republican Rep. Frank Lasee said Wednesday.

"To make our schools safe for our students to learn, all options should be on the table," he said. "Israel and Thailand have well-trained teachers carrying weapons and keeping their children safe from harm. It can work in Wisconsin."

In Thailand, where officials have been waging a bloody fight with Muslim separatists for the last two years, some teachers carry weapons for self defense as they are viewed as part of the government. In Israel, teachers are not allowed to carry weapons in the school, but security guards at the entrances are armed.

Lasee said he planned to introduce legislation that would allow school personnel to carry concealed weapons. He stressed that it would hinge on school staff members getting strict training on the use of the weapons, and he acknowledged he would have to work around a federal law that bans guns on school grounds.

The director of school safety for Milwaukee Public Schools, Pete Pochowski, opposed the idea.

"Statistically, the safest place for a child to be is in school," Pochowski said. "We have problems in our schools, but not to the point where we need to arm our teachers and principals."

Last week, a 15-year-old Wisconsin student was arrested in the shooting death of Weston Schools Principal John Klang. The criminal complaint said the teen brought guns to school to confront students, teachers and the principal.

    Wisconsin lawmaker urges arming teachers, UT, 6.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-05-arming-teachers_x.htm

Grief travels through Amish country

Updated 10/6/2006 12:02 AM ET
USA Today
By Alan Levin

BART TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Horse-drawn hearses carried the bodies of four Amish girls to their final resting place Thursday in somber processions that passed by their murderer's house.

Family members of Charles Carl Roberts IV, who shot himself in the head Monday after killing five girls and wounding five others, watched as three separate ceremonies of Amish carriages passed by. They said they were struggling to make sense of the tragedy wrought by the quiet milk truck driver, who went on a homicidal rampage Monday after taking over a one-room Amish schoolhouse.

"It is hard to accept what has happened," said Jacquie Hess, 48, whose niece, Marie, married Roberts and lived next door. "This was not the Charlie that any of us knew."

After hearing word on Monday that Roberts was the killer, Hess said, she drove to the West Nickel Mines Amish School and asked to see his body. She said she needed proof that Roberts was indeed the killer and not someone else.

"You do not want to see it," she recalled police telling her about the body.

The only solace, Hess said, has been the kindness the Amish families have shown, even as evidence emerged that Roberts brought an arsenal of guns, a complex restraint system and lubricating jelly to the school in what police said was an apparent attempt to molest young girls.

"It has helped us tremendous," Hess said. "They told us that there were no hard feelings, that all was forgiven."

A day of contrast

The grim funerals took place on a day of stunning beauty. The picture-perfect farms of drying cornstalks and alfalfa glistened in the sun. The handful of gray clouds in the morning gave way to unblemished blue skies.

The Amish dotted the roads in their horse-drawn buggies starting well before dawn. The coats of the high-stepping horses glistened in sweat. Wide-eyed children peered out of buggy windows at the hundreds of reporters and photographers who lined one section of road.

Funeral services were held in the homes of the victims: Naomi Rose Ebersol, 7, Marian Fisher, 13, and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7. All of the families live within a quarter-mile of one another. The funeral for the fifth girl, Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, will be held today.

Amish services are simple and focus on the dead's passage to heaven, said Rita Rhoads, a midwife who delivered the Ebersol and Fisher girls. The Amish are far more involved in preparing the bodies than is customary elsewhere, she said. "People are encouraged to touch the body," she said. "Children go to funerals from the time they are born. Death is natural."

Afterward the funerals, the mourners boarded nearly identical black-and-gray carriages and took the roughly 1-mile ride to the Georgetown Amish Cemetery in a procession reminiscent of the 19th century. The simple caskets were placed in hand-dug graves.

A hearse led each procession, made up of as many as 48 carriages. Several passenger vans carrying more Amish mourners followed each procession. The vans had been hired to bring mourners who were too far away to come by carriage, including the family of one girl who is still in the hospital in Philadelphia, said Duane Hagelgans, spokesman for a local emergency relief agency. The funerals were timed so families could attend multiple services.

The Amish, who have shunned publicity in the wake of the killings, issued a statement Wednesday asking the media to refrain from "close-up gawking and picture taking." The mourners were mostly somber but occasionally could be seen talking or smiling.

During the procession for Ebersol, the driver of one carriage slowed in front of Roberts' house and waved to his relatives standing outside.

Roberts' wife was invited to Fisher's funeral, but Hess and other relatives said they were not sure whether she attended.

Pennsylvania State Police say that evidence suggests Roberts, 32, was bent on a long siege at the one-room school. He brought 600 rounds of ammunition, three firearms and a stun gun, lumber to board up doors and plastic ties to bind the children. He let adult women and boys leave but made the girls stay behind.

Motive remains unclear

The motive for the attacks remains murky. In suicide notes and a cellphone call to his wife moments before the killing began, Roberts said he had molested two young female family members 20 years ago and had been dreaming of repeating that crime.

But the family members, now grown women, say they have no recollection of being molested.

"We are at a loss," said Shirley Girvin, 63, Marie Roberts' great aunt. "Charlie was a wonderful husband and father. There were no problems. No abuse, nothing that would indicate anything like this would happen. What happened in those weeks or months before (the attack), we may never know."

Said Hess: "I'm just so sorry that there had to be other children involved. Why he ended up with children, I don't know."

Another reason Roberts cited in suicide notes for his rampage was the lingering loss he felt over the death of a prematurely born daughter, Elise, nine years ago. Family members said Roberts had suffered greatly over the death.

He had personally carried a small casket holding Elise's body from the church to the hearse and from the hearse to the gravesite, Hess said. "I know that was very hard on him," she said.

Both women and a family friend, Randy Fischer, 51, said that Roberts was quiet and that they had seen no hint he was capable of violence.

"You never see an angry moment from him. You never heard an angry word from him. He was a very loving father," Hess said, gesturing toward Roberts' simple house. "If you wanted a perfect family, there is where it was."

Girvin, whose husband had picked up milk from Amish farmers just as Roberts had, said she had come to pay her respects to the Amish families. "That's all we can do, just to be there for them. They're there for us," she said.

Hess said she and her father, Lloyd Welk, 74, had gone to the Fisher house Tuesday and were overwhelmed with the way they were treated.

"When I told them that I felt so bad for their families, she said, 'You have the worst to go through,' " Hess said.

"They are a more forgiving community than what we are ourselves, and we need to be a little bit more like they are," Hess said.

    Grief travels through Amish country, UT, 6.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-05-amish-funerals_x.htm

Amish Prepare to Bury Shooting Victims

October 5, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:29 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) -- As the Amish prepared to bury four young victims of a horrific school shooting, they asked to be allowed to do so in private.

National mourning of similar tragedies, such as the massacre at Columbine High School, has been enabled in part by media coverage -- something the Amish generally shun and specifically spurned in a statement Wednesday that pleaded for privacy.

Instead, the Amish are coping with the slayings by looking inward. They are relying on themselves and their faith, just as they have for centuries, to get them through what one Amish bishop called ''our 9/11.''

The four girls to be buried Thursday are Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; Marian Fisher, 13; Mary Liz Miller, 8; and her sister Lena Miller, 7. The funeral for a fifth girl, Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, is scheduled for Friday.

About 300 to 500 people are expected at each funeral, said funeral director Philip W. Furman. The church-led services typically last about two hours before mourners travel in horse-drawn buggies to a cemetery for a short graveside service.

Amish custom calls for simple wooden caskets, narrow at the head and feet and wider in the middle. An Amish girl is typically laid to rest in a white dress, a cape, and a white prayer-covering on her head, Furman said.

The Amish say they are quietly accepting the deaths as God's will.

''They know their children are going to heaven. They know their children are innocent ... and they know that they will join them in death,'' said Gertrude Huntington, a Michigan researcher who has written a book about children in Amish society.

''The hurt is very great,'' Huntington said. ''But they don't balance the hurt with hate.''

In just about any other community, a deadly school shooting would have brought demands from civic leaders for tighter gun laws and better security, and the victims' loved ones would have lashed out at the gunman's family or threatened to sue.

But that's not the Amish way.

In the aftermath of Monday's violence, the Amish have reached out to the family of the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, who committed suicide during the attack in a one-room schoolhouse.

Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman, said an Amish neighbor comforted the Roberts family hours after the shooting and extended forgiveness to them. Among Roberts' survivors are his wife and three children.

''I hope they stay around here and they'll have a lot of friends and a lot of support,'' said Daniel Esh, a 57-year-old Amish artist and woodworker whose three grandnephews were inside the school during the attack.

Roberts' relatives may even receive money from a fund established to help victims and their families, said Kevin King, executive director of Mennonite Disaster services, an agency managing the donations.

Though the Amish generally do not accept help from outside their community, King quoted an Amish bishop as saying, ''We are not asking for funds. In fact, it's wrong for us to ask. But we will accept them with humility.''

Roberts stormed the school and shot 10 girls before turning the gun on himself. Investigators said Roberts, who brought lubricating jelly and plastic restraints with him, might have been planning to sexually assault the Amish girls.

Roberts revealed to his family in notes he left behind and in a phone call from inside the West Nickel Mines Amish School that he was tormented by memories of molesting two young relatives 20 years ago.

But police said Wednesday there was no evidence of any such sexual abuse. Investigators spoke to the two women Roberts named, who would have been 4 or 5 at the time, and neither recalls being sexually assaulted by Roberts.

''They were absolutely sure they had no contact with Roberts,'' state police Trooper Linette Quinn said.

Associated Press writers Mark Scolforo, Adam Geller and Martha Raffaele contributed to this story.

    Amish Prepare to Bury Shooting Victims, NYT, 5.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Amish-School-Shooting.html

Amish teacher tells how she fled school gunman

October 05, 2006
The Times
From Tim Reid in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania

THE first witness accounts of the bloodbath inside the Amish schoolhouse where a gunman killed five girls emerged yesterday, as the tiny village of Nickel Mines braced itself for the first of the funerals today.


As each girl lay, dressed in white, inside her home, a teacher who escaped the massacre and the coroner who first examined the victims described the scene on Monday.

Emma Mae Zook, 20, had just brought the 26 Amish schoolchildren in from morning break, and was teaching them German and spelling, when Charles Roberts appeared at the classroom door wearing a baseball cap and blue jeans and holding a clevis, a U-shaped piece of metal with holes at each end. He asked a bizarre question — had anyone seen a clevis on the roadway? — before walking back to his pick-up truck and returning with a gun.

“He stood very close to me to talk and didn’t look in my face to talk,” Miss Zook told the local Intelligencer Journal. Her mother and other members of her family were also inside the schoolhouse. As soon as they saw the gun Miss Zook and her mother ran out of a side door to a nearby farm, where they called the police.

Roberts, who had arrived at the schoolhouse with sexual lubricant and restraints, told a young boy to go after the women and bring them back or he would start shooting everyone. When the boy left, Emma Fisher, 9, escaped with him — a split-second decision that probably saved her life. Her sister Marian, 13, will be buried at noon today; her other sister, Barbie, 11, is among the five still gravely injured in hospital.

Roberts, who killed himself after the shooting spree, ordered everyone to the back of the room, by the blackboard. The women tried to comfort the children, by then crying.

“You ladies can leave; those with the children,” he said. Miss Zook’s sister-in-law, Sarah, 23, had her two-year-old daughter and newborn son with her. Her sister, Lydia Mae, 21, is eight months pregnant. They left along with Miss Zook’s sister, Ruth Ann, 16. They waited in the playground. A few minutes later all the boys began filing out. As they began running to the farm, they could hear pounding. It was the gunman nailing barricades across the doors.

Police believe that Roberts, who claimed in suicide notes that he had molested young relatives 20 years ago and dreamt about molesting again, intended to sexually assault the girls. But he panicked at the rapid arrival of police and began shooting the girls, many in the back of the head.

Janice Ballenger, the deputy coroner of Lancaster County, examined the body of Naomi Rose Ebersol, 7, who died in the arms of a state trooper. He had laid her down in the playground. Ms Ballenger found almost 20 bullet wounds on the girl. “She was a seven-year-old angel,” Ms Ballenger told the local newspaper. “Kneeling next to the body and counting all the bullet holes was the worst part.” Ms Ballenger pronounced Naomi Rose Ebersol, Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, and Roberts dead at the scene.

Inside, the schoolhouse was decorated with smiley-face stickers and a sign that read “Visitors Brighten People’s Days”. The small desks, usually lined up in neat rows, had been used by the gunman to barricade the door.

“There wasn’t a desk or chair in the room that wasn’t covered in blood or broken glass,” Ms Ballenger said.

The five dead girls were returned to their homes yesterday by a non-Amish undertaker, who had done his best to restore their faces.

Last night Marian Fisher, like the others, was being dressed head to toe in white by her mother, surrounded by relatives. Her sister who escaped, Emma, was frequently encouraged to touch her dead sibling. The Fisher family issued a statement, saying: “We don’t know or understand why this happened, but we do believe God allowd this to happen. The rest of us — our lives will go on.”

Four of the five girls will be buried today after two-hour services in each home, as the Amish do not have churches. For Nickel Mines, a village of 27 households, that will mean four funeral processions in a day. The four services, conducted in each family’s farm, will be held in German and English.

Preachers will give sermons, hymns will be sung and then the girls will be ferried a mile down the road to Bart cemetery by horse and buggy.

The family of Roberts continued to struggle with what he had done, but received enormous comfort from one group: the Amish. One Amish man visited the home of Roberts’s parents and held his father in his arms, saying: “We will forgive you.” The killer’s grandfather, Harry Neustadter, told The Times: “We’re so devastated. Our lives are turned upside down.”

    Amish teacher tells how she fled school gunman, Ts, 5.10.2006, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2389222,00.html

The Killings at an Amish School (6 Letters)

October 5, 2006
The New York Times

To the Editor:

We should not be surprised about the news of the horrific slaughter in the Amish schoolhouse (front page, Oct. 3). There has been a crisis in guns in America for some time now.

There are millions of guns in the hands of our citizens. The National Rifle Association doesn’t care, nor does Congress.

It is too late for gun control. There are now too many guns for the success of any legal regulation. We should expect, therefore, to learn of more killings of students at school and others in the future caused by the pestilence of guns inflicted on the country, and we should no longer be surprised.

Burton Kreindel
Newton, Mass., Oct. 3, 2006

To the Editor:

In “Three School Shootings” (editorial, Oct. 3), you say it isn’t “possible or politically tolerable to keep tabs on every gun.”

Since the majority of the American people support more stringent and effective gun control, and the digital technology is certainly available to do so, I would ask: Why not?

How many more innocent lives of schoolchildren must be sacrificed before Congress and the American electorate demonstrate the political will to enact strong and comprehensive gun control?

Michael W. Richter
Ridgefield, Conn., Oct. 3, 2006

To the Editor:

In the last five and a half weeks, five schools in the United States and Canada have suffered the invasion of gunmen: Aug. 24, Essex, Vt.; Sept. 13, Montreal; Sept. 27, Bailey, Colo.; Sept. 29, Cazenovia, Wis. And now, Oct. 2, Nickel Mines, Pa.

In four of these five incidents, the gunman targeted girls and women.

At what point do a country and its news media note this lethally combustible cocktail of gender and guns?

Men and boys with guns are stalking and hunting women and girls in schools repeatedly. Until we see “the gun problem” as equally a problem of violence against women, nothing will change, and I fear that the mourning and shock will continue.

Daniel Moshenberg
Washington, Oct. 3, 2006
The writer is director of the Women’s Studies Program at George Washington University.

To the Editor:

The rash of recent school killings once again raises the issue of gun control.

You write (editorial, Oct. 3) that “in these killings we see an open society threatened by the ubiquity of its weapons, in which one kind of freedom is allowed to trump all others.”

In most civilized countries, citizens are not free to carry weapons, and they do not have the extraordinary murder rate that the United States does. Why do we refuse to see the connection?

Rather than a freedom, let us call it what it is: terrorism at home.

Carol Delaney
Providence, R.I., Oct. 3, 2006

To the Editor:

Those of us who can still think logically on the gun issue have long been aware that banning guns from schools simply makes them a safe, target-rich environment for anyone who wants to kill children for whatever sick reason he may have.

It would be far better if laws banning guns from schools were repealed, and school employees with permits to carry firearms were allowed — even encouraged — to carry guns onto school property.

Even if a shot were never fired, the possible presence of armed defenders would make any would-be mass murderer think twice.

As for the possible effect upon the psyches of the students if they knew that some of their teachers were carrying guns, or had them in their cars or offices, it seems to me that kids have no problem with armed police and military personnel, because they know that those people are armed to protect them.

Brooks Lyman
Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 3, 2006
The writer is president of the M.I.T. Pistol and Rifle Club.

To the Editor:

Somehow I feel responsible, as a member of the larger American society, for these deaths. It was my America that somehow contributed to the creation of this killer.

Why so many school killings? Has the general climate of approval of sexual stimulation, torture, dishonesty in government and business, the atmosphere of “anything goes” resulted in this horror?

There is not much I can do, but I have written the commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police expressing my sympathy with all who have suffered in Nickel Mines and sent a small check for him to distribute in any way he sees fit to alleviate the pain in his community.

Jeanne M. Storm
Chester, Vt., Oct. 3, 2006

    The Killings at an Amish School (6 Letters), NYT, 5.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/opinion/l05shoot.html

Three Amish women in Nickel Mines, Pa., in town for a wedding, stopped Wednesday at the one-room schoolhouse to pay their respects.
From left are Amy Yoder, Veronica Weaver and her mother, Katie Weaver.

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

Amish School Survivors Struggle After Killings        NYT        5.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/us/05amish.html?hp&ex=
1160107200&en=edb2cc8c280a57de&ei=5094&partner=homepage
 

Amish School Survivors Struggle After Killings

October 5, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

NICKEL MINES, Pa., Oct. 4 — In the past two days, Leroy Zook has talked his way into a bloodied schoolyard to free a nervous carriage horse, visited wounded children in hospital gowns and viewed dead ones dressed in white, shaken the hand of a killer’s father-in-law, prayed, sung and milked his cows.

Seven members of Mr. Zook’s family were in the one-room Amish schoolhouse on Monday morning when Charles C. Roberts IV rapped on the door armed with chains, clamps and guns. Mr. Roberts shot 10 girls — aged 6 to 13 — killing 5 of them and then committing suicide. All the Zooks — Mr. Zook’s wife, two daughters, one of whom was the teacher, two daughters-in-law and two baby grandchildren got out unharmed, but not unshaken.

The police have praised Emma Mae Zook, the 20-year-old teacher who, with her mother, slipped out to call 911. Less has been said about the three women who were left behind as the gunman separated the girls from the boys and lined them up.

“They’re actually hurting about as bad as anybody else,” said Mr. Zook, standing on the driveway of the family farm just before supper, wearing suspenders and a straw hat with a papery black band around the brim. “I didn’t realize that until I talked to them today. They were there when he was tying the girls up, and they were telling the children to stay calm, and he come down the line and turned them loose.”

Mr. Zook said one of the wounded girls had been removed from her ventilator on Tuesday night and had told her parents about what happened after the children, who according to Amish custom are insulated from violence, had been left alone with Mr. Roberts.

“They talked with this gunman and asked him why he was doing this,” Mr. Zook said. “And he told them why: he’s angry at God, he’s just bitter. He told them that they’re supposed to pray for him that he wouldn’t do this.”

He also said, “The oldest girl there, she said ‘Shoot me, and leave the others alone.’ ”

Investigators are still trying to determine the motive of Mr. Roberts, who was not Amish but drove a milk truck in the neighborhood of the West Nickel Mines School. Mr. Roberts, 32, left suicide notes that said he had never been the same since he and his wife’s first child, Elise, died 20 minutes after birth nine years ago. Shortly before the shootings, he told his wife that he had molested two young relatives 20 years before.

On Tuesday, the state police said the two relatives had been interviewed and did not recall ever being sexually assaulted by Mr. Roberts. They would have been 4 or 5 at the time, said Linette Quinn, a spokeswoman for the state police. Mr. Roberts had never been the subject of any child molestation investigation, Ms. Quinn said.

She said the police had not yet interviewed any of the surviving girls.

As the community struggled to comprehend the killer’s actions, families prepared for funerals. Horse-drawn buggies used by the Amish filled the field next to the home where a wake was being held for Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7. Children in bonnets clustered quietly in the yard, and women in long aprons carried casseroles to the door.

Mr. Zook said he and Emma Mae — his daughter — had gone to visit one of the wounded girls in the hospital that day. “That perked her right up,” he said. But at the sight of her in the hospital bed, with tubes attached to her body, Emma Mae fainted, he said. “She’s weak. She just went and sat down in a chair.”

Behind him, Emma Mae’s twin brother and a sister listened shyly to their father’s conversation. Mr. Zook’s wife, dressed in rubber boots, tended to chores.

Throughout this ordeal, the Amish, whose avoidance of vanity extends even to buttons and zippers, have been the object of fascination not just because of their old-fashioned dress and rejection of modern conveniences like cars and electricity, but because of their stoicism, faith and capacity for forgiveness.

Rita Rhoads, a midwife who helped in the births of two of the murdered girls, said the father of one told her that God had helped his daughter. “He said there was a battle between good and evil Monday, and good won,” Ms. Rhoads said. “He felt that way because the shooter was killed before he was able to carry out all of his plans.”

Investigators said they believed Mr. Roberts intended to sexually molest the girls but was interrupted by the arrival of the police.

Lil Nissley, whose daughters had been playmates with one of the victims, said she was at the farm where those fleeing the schoolhouse — the male students and the adult women — had taken refuge. “Any outsider would have said, what’s wrong with these calm people?” she said. “I mean, we were crying, we were praying, but we weren’t hysterical.”

But Ms. Nissley and her husband, David, who are not Amish, said the composure was a matter of culture and training, not suppression. “Their blood runs red,” Mr. Nissley said.

Still, it is not unusual for the Amish to reach out to those who hurt them. When an Amish dies in a car accident, for example, the motorist is often invited to the funeral. Mr. Zook said he had shaken hands with Mr. Roberts’s father-in-law, whom he encountered at the home of the Fisher family, who had three daughters in the school. One escaped, another was wounded and the third was killed. Mr. Zook said such encounters helped the survivors victims heal.

“I think it’s helping him to meet people too, and see that there’s no grudge,” he said of the father-in-law. “How could you hold a grudge against the wife, the family?”

As satellite trucks and reporters descended on the area, many residents said they felt protective of the Amish, who shun publicity. And many Amish said they did not blame the English, as they call their non-Amish neighbors, for what happened.

But the shootings still meant a loss of trust between the Amish and the modern world, especially for the young. One 34-year-old Amish man, who said he would not give his name because he did not want to attract attention, said that the day after the shooting he had to ask a reporter parked near an Amish schoolhouse to move along because her presence was scaring the children.

“She was just sitting there doing bookwork, but the kids were all hiding behind the school peeping around the side,” he said.

After all, they had just learned that the recent carnage occurred after an “Englishman” had parked his pickup truck in front of a school.

“It’s going to be a scar on them for some time,” the man said.

Sean D. Hamill contributed reporting.

    Amish School Survivors Struggle After Killings, NYT, 5.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/us/05amish.html?hp&ex=1160107200&en=edb2cc8c280a57de&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Colo. School Gunman Was Shot 4 Times

October 4, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:09 p.m. ET
The New York Times

DENVER (AP) -- The man who took six girls hostage at a Colorado high school last week was shot four times as the standoff ended -- once by his own gun and three times by SWAT officers, according to autopsy results released Wednesday by state officials.

Authorities were awaiting more information to determine whether Duane Morrison died from the self-inflicted gunshot wound or the officers' shots, said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

Morrison, a 53-year-old drifter, had taken six girls hostage at Platte Canyon High School Sept. 27. He released four of them before SWAT officers blasted their way into Room 206, when authorities say he shot 16-year-old Emily Keyes before shooting himself.

Clem said autopsy results showed that Morrison killed Keyes with a single gunshot to the back of the head. She and the other five girls had been sexually assaulted, Sheriff Fred Wegener has said.

Tests show that Morrison had no drugs or alcohol in his system, Clem said.

Clem also said school surveillance tapes showed Morrison's yellow Jeep in the parking lot of the school near Bailey, about 40 miles southwest of Denver, the day before the shooting. District superintendent Jim Walpole said officials do not know what Morrison had been doing at the school then.

The shooting, one of several at schools across the country in the last several days, was similar to a slaying Monday at an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, in which a man tied up 10 young girls and shot them, killing five, before killing himself.

Students and parents were allowed to return to Platte Canyon High for the first time Wednesday to pick up belongings left behind when the building was evacuated last week. Classes were to resume Thursday.

Room 206 will be sealed off for the rest of the school year, Walpole said Tuesday. He said additional security officers have been hired and adult visitors will be required to wear name tags in the school.

Several hundred students, parents and Bailey-area residents attended a football game Tuesday, the first organized event since the shooting. The game, which was dedicated to Emily's memory, had been originally scheduled Saturday.

    Colo. School Gunman Was Shot 4 Times, NYT, 4.10.2006,http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-School-Standoff.html

Coroner Found Gory Scene at Amish School

October 4, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:11 p.m. ET
The New York Times

QUARRYVILLE, Pa. (AP) -- When the deputy coroner reached the Amish schoolhouse, she found blood on every desk, every window broken and the body of a young girl slumped beneath the chalkboard. Ten children had been shot, five fatally, and the gunman was dead.

''It was horrible. I don't know how else to explain it,'' Amanda Shelley, deputy Lancaster County coroner, said Wednesday. ''I hope to never see anything like that again in my life.''

The gunman, a 32-year-old milk truck driver and father of three, was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a button-down shirt, Shelley said. He had stationed weapons around the schoolhouse and ''really appeared he had planned on staying there a few hours,'' she said.

Authorities say Charles Carl Roberts IV had started buying supplies for a long siege six days before he stormed the tiny schoolhouse. He made a checklist of what to bring and wrote out four suicide notes, one talking about how he was ''filled with so much hate'' and ''unimaginable emptiness.''

Monday morning, Roberts ran his milk route as usual and walked his own children to school, police said. Then he drove to the Amish school and walked inside.

Teacher Emma Mae Zook, 20, said she immediately sensed something was off.

''He stood very close to me to talk and didn't look in my face to talk,'' she told the Intelligencer Journal of Lancaster in Wednesday's edition. She thought he was saying something about a metal object in the road.

Roberts walked back to his truck, then reappeared at the door with a gun, she said.

He sent the adults and boys out and bound the 10 girls in a row at the chalkboard, police said. He had been inside for about an hour, at one point speaking briefly by cell phone with his wife, when authorities closed in and Roberts opened fire on the girls at close range, fatally wounding five of them and then killing himself.

''We're quite certain, based on what we know, that he had no intention of coming out of there alive,'' State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said.

The letters Roberts left behind and that short conversation with his wife indicated Roberts had remembered molesting two relatives 20 years ago and had been tormented by dreams about molesting again.

Roberts had brought lubricating jelly to the schoolhouse and may have planned to sexually assault the Amish girls, Miller said. He said a piece of lumber found in the school had 10 large eyebolts spaced about 10 inches apart, suggesting that Roberts may have planned to truss up the girls.

In the suicide notes, Roberts also said he was haunted by the death of his prematurely born daughter in 1997. The baby, Elise, died 20 minutes after being delivered, Miller said.

Elise's death ''changed my life forever,'' Roberts wrote to his wife. ''I haven't been the same since it affected me in a way I never felt possible. I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself hate towards God and unimaginable emptyness it seems like everytime we do something fun I think about how Elise wasn't here to share it with us and I go right back to anger.''

The state police commissioner on Tuesday laid out the steps Roberts took in the days and hours leading up to his attack on the West Nickel Mines Amish School in Lancaster County, where the Amish live an 18th-century lifestyle with no automobiles and electricity.

''He certainly was very troubled, psychologically deep down, and was dealing with things that nobody else knew he was dealing with,'' Miller said. But he said Roberts, who was not Amish, did not appear to have anything against the Amish people.

During the standoff, Roberts told his wife in a cell phone call that he molested two female relatives when they were 3 to 5 years old, Miller said. Also, in the note to his wife, Marie, he said he ''had dreams about doing what he did 20 years ago again,'' Miller said.

Police could not immediately confirm Roberts' claim that he molested relatives, and family members knew nothing of molestation in his past. Police located the two relatives and were hoping to interview them.

At the time Roberts' wife received the phone call, she was attending a meeting of a prayer group she led that prayed for the community's schoolchildren.

The crime bore some resemblance to an attack on a high school in Bailey, Colo., where a 53-year-old man took six girls hostage and sexually assaulted them before fatally shooting one girl and killing himself. That attack occurred Sept. 27, the day after Roberts began buying materials for his siege.

At least three prayer services were held Tuesday night, attended by more than 1,650 people, who observed moments of silence, sang hymns and listened to Bible readings.

''Set your troubled hearts to rest,'' the Rev. Douglas Hileman said from the pulpit of Georgetown United Methodist Church, a short distance from the crime scene. ''May we be able to forgive as God has already forgiven us.''

The victims were identified as Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12; Marian Fisher, 13; Mary Liz Miller, 8; and her sister Lena Miller, 7. Stoltzfus' sister was among the wounded.

Three other girls were in critical condition and two were in serious condition. They ranged in age from 6 to 13.

Church members visited with the victims' families Tuesday, preparing meals and doing household chores, while Amish elders planned funerals.

Sam Stoltzfus, 63, an Amish woodworker who lives a few miles away from the shooting scene, said the victims' families will be sustained by their faith.

''We think it was God's plan and we're going to have to pick up the pieces and keep going,'' he said. ''A funeral to us is a much more important thing than the day of birth because we believe in the hereafter. The children are better off than their survivors.''

------

Associated Press writer Michael Rubinkam contributed to this report.

    Coroner Found Gory Scene at Amish School, NYT, 4.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Amish-School-Shooting.html

Police Describe Gunman’s Plan in School Siege

October 4, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI and SHAILA DEWAN

NICKEL MINES, Pa., Oct. 3 — As the Amish in this rural farm community turned inward to cope with the magnitude of the deadly school shooting on Monday, police investigators pieced together the gunman’s elaborate preparations for an extended siege that, they said, was intended to include the sexual assault of his young hostages.

When the gunman, Charles C. Roberts IV, 32, arrived at West Nickel Mines Amish School, he brought an assortment of weapons, hardware and lubricant that indicated he may have been planning to torture and molest the female students, the police said.

Speaking to his wife by cellphone after he had bound his hostages with wire and plastic ties, Mr. Roberts told her — for the first time — that he had molested two younger relatives, when he was 12 and had recently dreamed of sexually abusing young girls again, the police said. He also said his life had been warped by anger and grief since the death of their newborn daughter nine years ago.

But he “became confused” and started shooting when the police arrived, said Col. Jeffrey B. Miller, commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police, killing five girls, seriously injuring five others, then killing himself without carrying out any sexual assault.

As the details were disclosed and the death count rose to five, police officers, firefighters and residents in horse-drawn buggies gathered outside the homes of the some of the slain girls’ relatives to fend off news reporters and satellite trucks. At least 150 members of the Amish community met at a home prayer meeting about 200 yards from the schoolhouse. And community members also started a charity fund to help the victims’ families and Mr. Roberts’s widow and three young children.

With their traditional garb and religious dictum that forbids the use of technological advances like electricity and motor vehicles, the Amish try to insulate their lives from the bedlam and violence of modern life.

But the bloody attack by Mr. Roberts, who was raised in the area but was not Amish, had breached that insularity, leaving residents of a community known for its stoicism angry, saddened and shaken.

Emma Mae Zook, the young teacher who called the police after fleeing the school as Mr. Roberts barricaded its doors, spent part of the day trying to offer solace to families of her students, according to relatives.

“She’s trying to comfort the families even as she struggles herself,” said Ms. Zook’s second cousin, a woman in her 50’s who did not want her name used.

The police on Tuesday released the names of the children who died. They are Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; Anna Mae Stolzfus, 12; Marian Fisher, 13; Mary Liz Miller, 8; and her sister Lena Miller, 7. Gov. Edward G. Rendell said flags would fly at half staff in the capital, Harrisburg, and in Lancaster County until after the funerals for the children.

Mr. Roberts had no criminal record or history of psychiatric illness, the authorities said. Although he was scheduled to take a random drug test at his job, there was no indication that he had a substance abuse problem or was worried about the screening, Colonel Miller said.

The police were also investigating Mr. Roberts’s assertion that he had molested relatives when he was 12, but had been unable to corroborate it. Moments before he opened fire, Mr. Roberts told his wife, Marie, who was leading a prayer meeting at a church, of the sexual assaults. He then told her that he had left four suicide notes at home, Colonel Miller said, one of which described the lingering wounds he had felt since the death of their daughter Elise, who was born prematurely in 1997 and lived only 20 minutes.

“It changed my life forever, I haven’t been the same since,” he wrote in a note the police released on Tuesday. “It affected me in a way I never felt possible. I am filled with so much hate, hate towards myself, hate towards God and unimaginable emptiness. It seems like every time we do something fun, I think abut how Elise wasn’t here to share it with us and I got right back to anger.”

Relatives and neighbors said there was no sign of that anguish in the hours before his rampage began.

But Paula Derby, 31, said that it was unusual to see him drop off his children at the bus stop on Monday morning. Ms. Derby, who is also a parent, said that as Mr. Roberts’s two oldest children began to board the bus, Marie Roberts said to them: “Hey kids, come back here, Dad wants to give you a hug.”

Mr. Roberts then hugged and kissed his children, saying, “Remember, Daddy loves you.”

After telling his wife that he was heading to his drug test, Mr. Roberts instead went to a hardware store, where he made a purchase at 9:14 a.m. and another at 9:16 a.m., the authorities said.

When Mr. Roberts arrived at the school just over an hour later, he was carrying a 9-millimeter handgun, Colonel Miller said, and asked the teacher, “Have you seen anything like this?” referring to the weapon. “Can you help me find it?”

Once in the classroom, Mr. Roberts ordered all 15 boys to leave, along with four adult women who were visiting, three of whom had young children with them.

Mr. Roberts ordered the 10 remaining girls to line up facing the blackboard and remain silent as he lashed their ankles with wire and plastic ties. As he spoke with his wife, Mr. Roberts warned that he would begin shooting within 10 seconds if the police did not leave. But he did not wait, Colonel Miller said.

The authorities said that the collection of chains, clamps and K-Y Jelly found in the schoolhouse appeared to indicate that Mr. Roberts had planned a sexual assault.

“The K-Y Jelly has no exact reason, other than the potential for a sexual assault aid,” Colonel Miller said.

As the details of the ordeal began to sink in, relatives said the youngsters who escaped began to agonize over whether they had missed an opportunity to prevent the attack on their classmates.

“I pity the children in the school” who got out, said Jacob Fisher Jr., 23, a farmer who lives across the street from Mr. Roberts’s home. “It’s going to be be a scar on their own lives.”

Sean D. Hamill contributed reporting from Nickel Mines, Pa., and Gary Gately from Baltimore.

    Police Describe Gunman’s Plan in School Siege, NYT, 3.10.2006,http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/us/04children.html?hp&ex=1160020800&en=a8effa30b4aa9779&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Police: Gunman said he molested, dreamed of doing it again

Updated 10/3/2006 12:32 PM ET
AP
USA Today

QUARRYVILLE, Pa. (AP) — A man who laid siege to a one-room Amish schoolhouse told his wife he had molested young children decades ago and left a note saying he had "dreams of molesting again," state police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller said Tuesday.

Police said they could not confirm the claim by Charles Carl Roberts IV and that family members knew nothing of the alleged molestation.

Earlier Tuesday, two more children died of wounds from the shootings, raising the death toll to five girls plus the gunman.

Five children remained hospitalized after Monday's school shooting, the nation's third in less than a week, in a bucolic area of Lancaster County. Roberts shot himself as police stormed the schoolhouse, which sat on a patch of grass amid pastures and farm fields, authorities said.

Roberts wrote his wife and children suicide notes, took three guns and ammunition and went to the West Nickel Mines Amish School ready for an extended siege. He also had with him sex lubricant, but there was no evidence that any of the Amish children had been sexually assaulted, Miller said.

A 9-year-old girl who had been taken to Christiana Hospital in Delaware died at about 1 a.m. Tuesday, hospital spokesman Spiros Mantzavinos said. A 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," Stranges said. "She was taken off life support and she passed away shortly after."

Roberts, a 32-year-old father of three from the nearby town of Bart, was not Amish and did not appear to be targeting the Amish specifically, police said. He seemed bent on killing young girls and apparently figured he could succeed at the lightly guarded schoolhouse, authorities said.

He had with him 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, police said.

Two young students were killed at the school, along with a female teacher's aide who was slightly older than the students. Seven others, most shot at point-blank range, were taken to hospitals, and two of them died early Tuesday, authorities said.

Of the five still in hospitals, a 6-year-old girl was in critical condition and a 13-year-old girl was in serious condition at Penn State Children's Hospital late Monday morning. 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 in critical condition Tuesday after hours of surgery Monday, spokeswoman Peggy Flynn said.

According to investigators, Roberts dropped his own children off at their school bus stop, and later pulled up at the Amish school, which had about 25 to 30 students ranging in age from six to 13.

He released about 15 boys and several women, barred the doors with desks and wood secured 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.

Moments later, Roberts fired at the girls and then killed himself before police made their way into the building.

Roberts' co-workers said his mood had darkened in recent weeks, but suddenly brightened over the weekend, Miller said.

"A few days before the shooting a weight was lifted," Miller said Tuesday.

Roberts' own father was close to the Amish. Charles C. Roberts III received state approval in 2004 to use his sport-utility vehicle for a paratransit service for the Amish, whose religious beliefs do not allow them to drive.

On his application, more than two dozen people signed documents saying his services would be "a valuable asset to the needs of our community." A number of people in areas of Pennsylvania with large Amish populations operate such paratransit services, mainly to take Amish people to doctors' appointments, shops and other places too far for their buggies to travel, Public Utility Commission spokeswoman Cyndi Page said.

    Police: Gunman said he molested, dreamed of doing it again, UT, 3.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-03-amish-shooting_x.htm

Gunman chose Amish school because it was easy target

Tue Oct 3, 2006 10:30 AM ET
Reuters
By Jon Hurdle

NICKEL MINES, Penn. (Reuters) - The 32-year-old dairy truck driver who stormed a one-room school and killed five girls apparently chose the schoolhouse because it was an easy target rather than because he had a grudge against the Amish, police said.

Pennsylvania police said the man lost a child of his own three years ago, and they were investigating suicide notes that he left as well as statements he made to his wife that he was seeking revenge for something that occurred 20 years ago.

Two girls died overnight, bringing to five the number of students killed, police said on Tuesday.

The two girls who died overnight were aged 7 and 8, said Commissioner Jeffrey Miller of the Pennsylvania state police. One other girl remained in critical condition and another four were described as stable, state police said.

Commenting on Roberts' motive, Miller said the death of a child three years ago may have affected his state of mind.

"He may have been angry with God for having lost a child," Miller said at a news briefing.

The third deadly U.S. school shooting in a week shattered the calm of an Amish farm community where there is little crime and where the sight of horse-drawn buggies, men in simple black coats and hats, and women in bonnets conjures up a bygone age.

"We don't believe that he had ... some animus toward the Amish community. We believe that this was a target of opportunity," Miller said. "He believed he could get in there pretty easily and secure it from a defensive posture."

"NO SENSE IN GETTING ANGRY"

Several members of the Amish community interviewed by Reuters said they were sad and disappointed but not angry and emphasized the need for forgiveness.

"It's just not the way we think. There is no sense in getting angry," said Henry Fisher, 62, a retired farmer with five grown children and 33 grandchildren who has lived all his life in the town some 60 miles west of Philadelphia.

He said the Amish lifestyle with no cars, television or credit cards, was "a more peaceful life ... to keep the next generation living a more humble life."

He also said he did not expect additional security such as locks on schools because this was a "freak accident."

Descendants of Swiss-German settlers, the Amish live in communities familiar to many from the 1985 movie "Witness" starring Harrison Ford as a detective trying to protect an Amish boy threatened by mobsters after he witnesses a crime.

A 25-year-old Amish man who declined to give his name said he lost his 13-year-old niece in the shooting and another niece aged 11 was in stable condition in a Philadelphia hospital.

He expressed resignation rather than anger. "I think it was going to happen. God has his hand in it," he said.

The gunman, identified as Charles Carl Roberts, 32, was not Amish and had no prior criminal record.

According to the Lancaster Era newspaper, Roberts and his wife, Marie Roberts, had a daughter who died as an infant.

They also have two sons and a daughter, ranging in age from 1-1/2 to 7, the paper said. Roberts walked his older children to a school bus stop in the morning, waited until his wife left the house, left suicide notes for his family and then drove a borrowed pickup truck to the Amish school.

He dismissed the boys in the school, as well as the teacher and some other adults. Surrounded by police around 45 minutes after he entered the school, he made brief calls by cellphone to his wife and to police and then opened fire on his victims.

Roberts fired three rounds from a shotgun and 13 from a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, police said, shooting the children "execution style" in the back of the head.

"Death of Innocents" was the headline in the Intelligencer Journal of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which quoted Marie Roberts as saying her husband was "loving, supportive, thoughtful, all the things you'd always want and more."

She was also quoted as saying he was "an exceptional father" who took his children to soccer practices, played ball in the backyard and took their 7-year-old daughter shopping.

    Gunman chose Amish school because it was easy target, R, 3.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-10-03T143011Z_01_N02359044_RTRUKOC_0_US-CRIME-SCHOOLS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-5

A father of three, a killer of schoolgirls

Posted on Tue, Oct. 03, 2006
The Philadelphia Inquirer
By Christine Schiavo and Larry King
Inquirer Staff Writers

PARADISE, Pa. - The spare outline of the gunman's life suggested anything but an executioner of children.

Charles Carl Roberts IV had three young children of his own and had endured the infant death of a fourth.

Though not Amish, he and his family seemed as deeply Christian as any in this rural area of Lancaster County.

His father, Charles, a retired police officer, was licensed to provide paratransit service for the Amish.

And as a truck driver, Roberts, 32, collected milk from local farms - providing sustenance within the community of the plain people, whose children attended a one-room school near his home in Bart Township.

Yesterday, state police say, Roberts arrived at the West Nickel Mines Amish School with deadly cargo: three guns, 600 rounds of ammunition, and a decades-old grudge. He killed three girls execution-style, wounded eight others, then killed himself, police said.

Along with the carnage, he left behind baffling clues: notes to his family that police say suggested he was angry at life and at God, and an unexplained grudge he apparently had been carrying since he was about 12.

"The man who did this today is not the Charlie that I've been married to for almost 10 years," Roberts' wife, Marie, said in a statement read by a family friend. "My husband is loving, supportive, thoughtful, all the things you'd always want and more."

Neighbors said Roberts was not as friendly as most in the close-knit community.

"He was standoffish," said Morgan Erb, 15, who used to baby-sit for two of the Robertses' children, Emily, now 7, and Brice, 5. The family also has a baby boy, 1.

"He was one that never said much to anybody," said Dorothy Rineer, who lives across the street from the Roberts family.

As he often did on a Sunday night, Roberts picked up milk from an Amish farmer in the village of Georgetown about 11 p.m., Rineer said. He picked up milk on dairy farms throughout the area, typically working until the early morning, she said. Neighbors saw no break in Roberts' routine yesterday as he headed out to the school-bus stop with Emily and Brice shortly after 8 a.m.

The children were whisked from Bart-Colerain Elementary School by their grandmother about 11 a.m., said principal Thomas Brackbill.

He said that the Roberts children are well liked by their classmates and that Marie Roberts is an active member of the school's PTO.

Dawn Lamparter, who grew up with Marie, called the Robertses "the ideal family."

Marie Roberts was more outgoing than her husband, neighbors said. She was involved in Christian groups, and her home often was a congregating place for women organizing church activities.

Roberts' parents also are religious. His mother, Teresa, works at Sight & Sound Theaters, a Christian organization that stages Bible plays in Strasburg.

"I'm sorry, I can't talk right now," a tearful Teresa Roberts said upon answering the phone two hours after the shooting.

The father, Charles C. Roberts III, is retired from the Manor Township, Lancaster County, police force. Two years ago, he applied to the state for a special license to provide paratransit service to the Amish.

His request was approved by the Public Utility Commission, and he received his certificate to operate around Thanksgiving of that year. The application listed 29 Strasburg residents as potential riders, several of them his neighbors.

It was unclear how long Charles Roberts IV had been transporting milk. His employer, Northwest Food Products, declined to comment yesterday.

The Robertses suffered a tragedy in 1997 when their firstborn, Elise Victoria, died shortly after birth at Lancaster General Hospital.

He doted on the children who followed.

"He was an exceptional father," his wife said in her statement. "Our hearts are broken, our lives are shattered, and we grieve for the innocence and lives that were lost today."

    A father of three, a killer of schoolgirls, PI, 3.10.2006, http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/15664055.htm

Fifth child dies of wounds from shootings at Amish school

Updated 10/3/2006 11:29 AM ET
From staff and wire reports
USA Today

NICKEL MINES, Pa. — Two more young girls died today from shootings at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster, Pa., raising the death toll to five from execution-style killings by a neighbor who police said was "angry at life."

Col. Jeffrey Miller, commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police, told NBC's Today program that Charles Carl Roberts IV, who committed suicide, may have gone on his shooting spree because of the loss of a daughter about three years ago. He did not elaborate.

Police said one of the victims, a 7-year-old girl, died at Penn State Children's Hospital in Hershey and the other died at Christiana Hospital in Delaware.

Five more children were still hospitalized, but state police spokeswoman Linette Quinn said they were "coming along very well." These included a 6-year-old girl in critical condition, and a 13-year-old in serious condition at a Philadelphia hospital. Three other girls, ages 8, 10 and 12, underwent surgery and were in critical condition.

Parents of the hospitalized children refused to fly in planes,— in keeping with Amish tradition, and were driven to the hospitals, Miller said on Today.

The shootings stunned this quiet, insular community in the rolling cornfields and pastures of Amish country, about 60 miles west of Philadelphia. Most Amish, who reject such modern conveniences as telephones and automobiles in favor of a quieter, more measured lifestyle, are seldom exposed to crime. In nearby Strasburg, the FBI recorded just two violent crimes in 2005: a robbery and an assault.

It was the third fatal school shooting in the USA in six days. Last week, a gunman in Bailey, Colo., took several girls hostage at a high school and killed one of them. Friday, a school principal was shot and killed by a ninth-grader in Cazenovia, Wis.

Miller said the one-room schoolhouse here is "a horrendous crime scene."

"One of the children died in the arms of one of our troopers," he said.

The gunman was identified as Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, who lived near the school. Roberts, who was not Amish, backed a pickup to the front door of the yellow schoolhouse around 10:35 a.m., then began boarding up the doors with lumber that he had brought. He carried a handgun, a rifle and a shotgun, Miller said.

After seizing the schoolroom, the gunmen freed 15 boys, along with four adult women, including the teacher, a pregnant woman, and those with infants.

He lined up the rest of the girls in front of a blackboard and bound their feet with flex-cuffs, or disposable handcuffs. Roberts had brought a change of clothes, a bucket and toilet paper, apparently planning for a long siege, Miller said. He also carried 600 rounds of ammunition.

After Pennsylvania state police arrived, Roberts called the Lancaster County sheriff's office on his cellphone and warned officers to back off "within 10 seconds" or he would start shooting, Miller said.

Moments later, he opened fire with a 9mm handgun in "rapid succession," Miller said, killing two students and a teenage student aide. He then reloaded and killed himself.

Police say Roberts apparently chose the school because it was an easy target, and not because of any Amish connection.

Roberts had left "rambling" suicide notes at his home Monday morning for his three children, Miller said. After finding the messages, Roberts' wife, Marie, called his cellphone about 11 a.m, while he was at the school. He told her he was "seeking revenge" for something that happened 20 years ago, Miller said, an apparent reference to the reported loss of a daughter.

Roberts also told his wife that "the police were here and that 'I'm not coming home.' "

"He told her he loved her and that was it," Miller said.

Co-workers told police that Roberts, who was normally friendly and talkative, had become less outgoing in the past few days. They said that a "calm" had come over him, an indication, Miller said, that Roberts had decided to go his rampage.

"He was angry at life. He was angry at God," Miller said.

In a statement released to reporters, Marie Roberts described her husband as "loving, supportive and thoughtful."

"He was an exceptional father," she said in the statement. "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."

Although the attack was similar to the killings last week in Colorado, Miller said he did not believe it was a copycat crime. "I really believe this was about this individual and what was going on inside his head," he said.

Contributors: By Alan Levin and Laura Parker, USA TODAY; Parker reported from McLean, Va.; the Associated Press.

    Fifth child dies of wounds from shootings at Amish school, UT, 3.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-02-amish-shooting_x.htm

A 5th Student Dies After Amish School Executions

October 3, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI and GARY GATEL

NICKEL MINES, Pa., Oct. 3 — A dairy truck driver, apparently nursing a 20-year-old grudge, walked into a one-room Amish schoolhouse here Monday morning and systematically tried to execute the girls there, shooting 12 of them before killing himself, the police said. Four of the girls died on Monday, and according to a hospital official, a fifth died of her wounds early today.

The heavily armed gunman first ordered the 15 boys in the room to leave, along with several adults, and demanded that the 11 girls line up facing the blackboard. As the gunman lashed the students’ legs together with wire and plastic ties, the teacher dashed from the room and called the police around 10:35 a.m.

The gunman, identified as Charles C. Roberts, 32, killed himself as the police stormed the West Nickel Mines Amish School, which is set back in a cornfield on a street of stone houses, barns and silos in Lancaster County, about 50 miles west of Philadelphia. Several of the wounded were in critical condition in area hospitals.

“He wanted to find female victims,” said Col. Jeffrey B. Miller, commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police. “This was a target of opportunity.”

The police did not release the names of the victims. All were girls between the ages of 6 and 13. The girl who died early this morning at Christiana Hospital in Delaware was nine, according to a hospital spokesman.

Mr. Roberts had no criminal record or history of psychiatric illness, the authorities said. But notes that he left at his home — where he lived with his wife, Marie, and their three children — said that he was distraught about a slight that had occurred more than 20 years ago.

The police would not describe the incident that had upset him. But Colonel Miller said Mr. Roberts, who lived near the school but was not Amish, did not appear to have been motivated by religious bias. The police said they were looking into a report that the couple lost an infant daughter in 1997.

When Mr. Roberts arrived at the school shortly before 10:30 a.m., he was carrying a 9-millimeter handgun, Colonel Miller said, and asked the teacher, “Have you seen anything like this?” referring to the weapon. “Can you help me find it?”

When the state police arrived around 10:45, Mr. Roberts had barricaded the doors with bolts and lumber he had brought in his pickup truck, Colonel Miller said.

After a brief cellphone exchange with his wife and then with the state police, Mr. Roberts began shooting, aiming the handgun and a shotgun at the children as they stood lined in front of the room. As the police began charging the building around 11, Mr. Roberts fired a shot into his head, Colonel Miller said.

“He was angry with life; he was angry at God,” Colonel Miller said. “It appears he chose this school because it was close to his home, it had the female victims he was looking for, and it probably seemed easier to get into than some bigger school.”

The rampage was the third fatal shooting at a United States school in the past week but seemed nearly incomprehensible to many residents of the Amish community, where crime rates are so low that many homeowners do not lock their doors and many towns have no police force.

The Amish community in Pennsylvania, which numbers about 55,000, lives an agrarian lifestyle, shunning technological advances like electricity and automobiles. And many say their insular lifestyle gives them a sense that they are protected from the violence of American society. But as residents gathered near the school, some wearing traditional garb and arriving in horse-drawn buggies, they said that sense of safety had been shattered.

“If someone snaps and wants to do something stupid, there’s no distance that’s going to stop them,” said Jake King, 56, an Amish lantern maker who knew several families whose children had been shot.

Mr. Roberts’s relatives said they, too, were stunned by his violent outburst and had had no indication that he had been planning any attack. His wife issued a written statement offering sympathy to the families of his victims and said she could not reconcile the day’s events with the man she had loved.

Her statement was read by a family friend, Dwight Lefever, and described Mr. Roberts as a devoted father who had always taken the time to play with his three children, ferry them to soccer practice and birthday parties, and had “never once refused to help change a diaper.”

“The man that did this thing is not the Charles I was married to for nearly 10 years,” Mrs. Roberts said in the statement.

Once the police entered the building, they found a cache of weapons and supplies that indicated Mr. Roberts had prepared for a long siege. He had a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, two shotguns, a stun gun, two knives, two cans of gunpowder and 600 rounds of ammunition.

“He had planned this at least two or three days in advance,” Colonel Miller said in an interview on CNN this morning. He added that authorities believe Mr. Roberts chose the schoolhouse as a “target of opportunity” that he could easily secure in defense.

In a toolbox near Mr. Roberts’ body, the police discovered bolts he had used to barricade the school doors with two-by-fours, and pliers and wires he had used to bind the girls’ legs. Another five-gallon bucket he brought into the building contained earplugs, bathroom tissue and a clean change of clothing, the police said.

Mr. Roberts lived just over a mile from the school in the town of Bart, in a modular home that had a trampoline and sandbox in the yard and was already decorated for Halloween. Neighbors said he was jovial and generally well liked, and they were struggling to understand what had driven him to violence.

“I am dying to know what kind of insult from a girl 20 years ago could have led to this,” said Mary Miller, who lived on his street.

The police said, however, that Mr. Roberts’s co-workers had noticed changes in his behavior over the past several months. While he had long been known as an upbeat and outgoing person, this year he began to appear sullen, his co-workers told the police. Then, late last week, Mr. Roberts once again appeared upbeat at work, Colonel Miller said on Monday.

“We think that’s when he decided to do what he did,” Colonel Miller said. “It’s like his worries and burdens were lifted from him.”

The police said most of Mr. Roberts’s weapons appeared to be legal. He bought the 9-millimeter semiautomatic, which he fired at least 13 times during his rampage, from a store five miles from the schoolhouse in 2004. The shotguns and ammunition also appeared to be legal, the police said, although it was not clear whether his possession of a stun gun violated any law.

The police said Mr. Roberts had bought the ammunition and other supplies from area stores over the past several months, so there was no glaring sign that might have alerted store owners that he was about to burst out in violence.

The police said Mr. Roberts called his wife from a cellphone while he was inside the school just moments before the shooting. During the call, Colonel Miller said, Mr. Roberts made a reference to the grievance that he blamed for his despair, then told her: “The police are here. I’m not coming home.”

Colonel Miller said that once the gunfire began troopers charged the building and broke in through several windows in the school. By the time they arrived, however, the children lay dead or wounded in the front of the classroom and Mr. Roberts’s body was a few feet away. One child died in the arms of a trooper as he rushed her out of the building to get medical help, Colonel Miller said.

Lancaster County school officials held an emergency meeting last night to try to ease the concerns of school administrators and parents unnerved by the shooting. County officials said that despite the bloodshed, residents should be confident that most of the schools were safe.

That reassurance gave little comfort, however, to people like Dwylin Bieler, 42, whose 8-year-old daughter played with one shooting victim.

“You think something like this will never happen, especially in a place like this,” said Mr. Bieler, who is Mennonite, and says the Amish community makes him and others feel welcome. “You pray that it won’t happen. But you just never know. You can’t know. And that’s hard to accept.”

Christine Hauser contributed reporting from New York for this article.

    A 5th Student Dies After Amish School Executions, NYT, 3.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/us/04amishcnd.html?hp&ex=1159934400&en=5f84ed716dd263e3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Man Shoots 11, Killing 4 Girls, in Amish School

October 3, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI and GARY GATELY

NICKEL MINES, Pa., Oct. 2 — A dairy truck driver, apparently nursing a 20-year-old grudge, walked into a one-room Amish schoolhouse here Monday morning and systematically tried to execute the girls there, killing four and wounding seven before killing himself, the police said.

The heavily armed gunman first ordered the 15 boys in the room to leave, along with several adults, and demanded that the 11 girls line up facing the blackboard. As the gunman lashed the students’ legs together with wire and plastic ties, the teacher dashed from the room and called the police around 10:35 a.m.

The gunman, identified as Charles C. Roberts, 32, killed himself as the police stormed the West Nickel Mines Amish School, which is set back in a cornfield on a street of stone houses, barns and silos in Lancaster County, about 50 miles west of Philadelphia. Several of the wounded were in critical condition in area hospitals.

“He wanted to find female victims,” said Col. Jeffrey B. Miller, commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police. “This was a target of opportunity.”

Mr. Roberts had no criminal record or history of psychiatric illness, the authorities said. But notes he left at his home — where he lived with his wife, Marie, and their three children — said he was distraught about a slight that had occurred more than 20 years ago.

The police would not describe the incident that had upset him. But Colonel Miller said Mr. Roberts, who lived near the school but was not Amish, did not appear to have been motivated by religious bias. The police said they were looking into a report that the couple lost an infant daughter in 1997.

When Mr. Roberts arrived at the school shortly before 10:30 a.m., he was carrying a 9-millimeter handgun, Colonel Miller said, and asked the teacher, “Have you seen anything like this?” referring to the weapon. “Can you help me find it?”

When the state police arrived around 10:45, Mr. Roberts had barricaded the doors with bolts and lumber he had brought in his pickup truck, Colonel Miller said.

After a brief cellphone exchange with his wife and then with the state police, Mr. Roberts began shooting, aiming the handgun and a shotgun at the children as they stood lined in front of the room. As the police began charging the building around 11, Mr. Roberts fired a shot into his head, Colonel Miller said.

“He was angry with life; he was angry at God,” Colonel Miller said. “It appears he chose this school because it was close to his home, it had the female victims he was looking for, and it probably seemed easier to get into than some bigger school.”

The rampage was the third fatal shooting at a United States school in the past week but seemed nearly incomprehensible to many residents of the Amish community, where crime rates are so low that many homeowners do not lock their doors and many towns have no police force.

The Amish community in Pennsylvania, which numbers about 55,000, lives an agrarian lifestyle, shunning technological advances like electricity and automobiles. And many say their insular lifestyle gives them a sense that they are protected from the violence of American society. But as residents gathered near the school, some wearing traditional garb and arriving in horse-drawn buggies, they said that sense of safety had been shattered.

“If someone snaps and wants to do something stupid, there’s no distance that’s going to stop them,” said Jake King, 56, an Amish lantern maker who knew several families whose children had been shot.

Mr. Roberts’s relatives said they, too, were stunned by his violent outburst and had had no indication that he had been planning any attack. His wife issued a written statement offering sympathy to the families of his victims and said she could not reconcile the day’s events with the man she had loved.

Her statement was read by a family friend, Dwight Lefever, and described Mr. Roberts as a devoted father who had always taken the time to play with his three children, ferry them to soccer practice and birthday parties, and had “never once refused to help change a diaper.”

“The man that did this thing is not the Charles I was married to for nearly 10 years,” Mrs. Roberts said in the statement.

The police did not release the names of the victims but said all had been girls from 6 to 13.

Once the police entered the building, they found a cache of weapons and supplies that indicated Mr. Roberts had prepared for a long siege. He had a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, two shotguns, a stun gun, two knives, two cans of gunpowder and 600 rounds of ammunition.

In a toolbox near his body, the police discovered bolts he had used to barricade the school doors with two-by-fours, pliers and wires he had used to bind the girls’ legs. Another five-gallon bucket he brought into the building contained earplugs, bathroom tissue and a clean change of clothing, the police said.

Mr. Roberts lived just over a mile from the school in the town of Bart, in a modular home that had a trampoline and sandbox in the yard and was already decorated for Halloween. Neighbors said he was jovial and generally well liked, and they were struggling to understand what had driven him to violence.

“I am dying to know what kind of insult from a girl 20 years ago could have led to this,” said Mary Miller, who lived on his street.

The police said, however, that Mr. Roberts’s co-workers had noticed changes in his behavior over the past several months. While he had long been known as an upbeat and outgoing person, this year he began to appear sullen, his co-workers told the police. Then, late last week, Mr. Roberts once again appeared upbeat at work, Colonel Miller said.

“We think that’s when he decided to do what he did,” Colonel Miller said. “It’s like his worries and burdens were lifted from him.”

The police said most of Mr. Roberts’s weapons appeared to be legal. He bought the 9-millimeter semiautomatic, which he fired at least 13 times during his rampage, from a store five miles from the schoolhouse in 2004. The shotguns and ammunition also appeared to be legal, the police said, although it was not clear whether his possession of a stun gun violated any law.

The police said Mr. Roberts had bought the ammunition and other supplies from area stores over the past several months, so there was no glaring sign that might have alerted store owners that he was about to burst out in violence.

The police said Mr. Roberts called his wife from a cellphone while he was inside the school just moments before the shooting. During the call, Colonel Miller said, Mr. Roberts made a reference to the grievance that he blamed for his despair, then told her: “The police are here. I’m not coming home.”

Colonel Miller said that once the gunfire began troopers charged the building and broke in through several windows in the school. By the time they arrived, however, the children lay dead or wounded in the front of the classroom and Mr. Roberts’s body was a few feet away. One child died in the arms of a trooper as he rushed her out of the building to get medical help, Colonel Miller said.

Lancaster County school officials held an emergency meeting last night to try to ease the concerns of school administrators and parents unnerved by the shooting. County officials said that despite the bloodshed, residents should be confident that most of the schools were safe.

That reassurance gave little comfort, however, to people like Dwylin Bieler, 42, whose 8-year-old daughter played with one shooting victim.

“You think something like this will never happen, especially in a place like this,” said Mr. Bieler, who is Mennonite, and says the Amish community makes him and others feel welcome. “You pray that it won’t happen. But you just never know. You can’t know. And that’s hard to accept.”

    Man Shoots 11, Killing 4 Girls, in Amish School, NYT, 3.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/us/03amish.html?hp&ex=1159934400&en=472c34221f1272ab&ei=5094&partner=homepage

List of some fatal U.S. school shootings

Updated 10/2/2006 6:24 PM ET
The Associated Press
USA Today

A list of some fatal shootings at U.S. schools in recent years:

•Oct. 2, 2006: A gunman took about a dozen girls hostage, killing at least three of them, at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, police said. The shooter was among the dead, and a number of people were injured.

•Sept. 29, 2006: A 15-year-old brought two guns to a school in rural Cazenovia, Wis., and fatally shot the principal, a day after the principal gave him a disciplinary warning for having tobacco on school grounds, police said.

•Sept. 27, 2006: Duane Morrison, 53, took six girls hostage at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo. Morrison, sexually assaulting them and using them as human shields for hours before fatally shooting one girl and killing himself.

•Aug. 24, 2006: Christopher Williams, 27, went to an elementary school in Essex, Vt., looking for his ex-girlfriend, a teacher. He couldn't find her and fatally shot one teacher and wounded another, police said. Williams also killed his ex-girlfriend's mother, according to authorities. He shot himself twice in the head after the rampage and was arrested.

•March 21, 2005: A 16-year-old shot and killed five schoolmates, a teacher and an unarmed guard at a high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota before taking his own life. Weise had earlier killed his grandfather and his grandfather's companion.

•Nov. 22, 2004: A 16-year-old is accused of fatally shooting one student and wounding three others outside Strawberry Mansion High in Philadelphia. The attack apparently was over a $50 debt in a rap contest. The teen is set to stand trial on murder charges later this month.

•April 24, 2003: A 14-year-old shot and killed the principal in the crowded cafeteria of a junior high school in south-central Pennsylvania, before killing himself.

•May 26, 2000: A 13-year-old killed his English teacher on the last day of classes in Lake Worth, Fla., after the teacher refused to let him talk with two girls in his classroom. He was convicted of second-degree murder and is serving a 28-year sentence.

•April 20, 1999: An 18-year-old and a 17-year-old killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 23 before killing themselves at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

•May 21, 1998: Two teenagers were killed and more than 20 people hurt when a teenage boy opened fire at a high school in Springfield, Ore., after killing his parents. The 17-year-old was sentenced to nearly 112 years in prison.

•May 19, 1998: Three days before his graduation, an honor student opened fire at a high school in Fayetteville, Tenn., killing a classmate who was dating his ex-girlfriend. The 18-year-old was sentenced to life in prison.

•March 24, 1998: Two boys, ages 11 and 13, fired on their Jonesboro, Ark., middle school from nearby woods, killing four girls and a teacher and wounding 10 others. Both boys were later convicted of murder and can be held until age 21.

•Dec. 1, 1997: Three students were killed and five wounded at a high school in West Paducah, Ky. The then 14-year-old later pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murder and is serving life in prison.

•Oct. 1, 1997: A 16-year-old of Pearl, Miss., fatally shot two students and wounded seven others after stabbing his mother to death. He was sentenced the following year to three life sentences.

    List of some fatal U.S. school shootings, UT, 2.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-02-school-shootings_x.htm

Fatal Shooting Reported at Amish School

October 2, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:40 p.m. ET
The New York Times

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.''

Police surrounded a one-room schoolhouse Monday in response to reports of multiple shooting victims, a television station reported.

WGAL-TV said the incident occurred in southeastern Lancaster County.

About three dozen Amish people were standing behind a police line, and at least two ambulances had left the scene, the station said around noon. Television news helicopters showed a person being taken away on a stretcher to a waiting medical helicopter.

The Lancaster County 911 Web site reported that dozens of emergency units were dispatched to a ''medical emergency'' at 10:45 a.m. Monday.

    Fatal Shooting Reported at Amish School, NYT, 2.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Amish-School-Shooting.html?hp&ex=1159848000&en=ff86caf2236cc35f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Gun Reported at North Las Vegas School

October 2, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:33 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. (AP) -- Two schools were locked down Monday while police searched for a teenager who they said was spotted on a high school campus with a gun.

No students were hurt, and police said there was no initial indication that the teenager, who they said was not a student, had threatened anyone with the weapon, said Sean Walker, a North Las Vegas police spokesman.

The teen ran after being confronted by campus police as students were arriving at Mojave High School, Walker said.

A handgun was found behind a nearby church, Walker said, and both the high school and nearby Elizondo Elementary School were locked down while police searched the surrounding neighborhoods for the teen.

    Gun Reported at North Las Vegas School, NYT, 2.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Schools-lockdown.html