The Amish school shooting refers to an attack that occurred at the West Nickel Mines School, an Amish one-room schoolhouse in the Old Order Amish community of Nickel Mines, a village in Bart Township of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States, on October 2, 2006. Gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV took hostages and eventually shot and killed five girls (aged 6–13) before committing suicide in the schoolhouse.
The emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation in the response of the Amish community was widely discussed in the national media. The West Nickel Mines School was torn down, and a new one-room schoolhouse, the New Hope School, was built at another location.
The hostage-taking
The gunman, Charles Carl Roberts, backed a pickup truck up to the front of the Amish schoolhouse and entered the school at approximately 10:25 a.m. EDT, shortly after the children had returned from recess. He allegedly asked the teacher, Emma Mae Zook, and the students if they had seen a clevis pin missing along the road. Survivors later recounted that Roberts was mumbling his words and was not making direct eye contact with anyone. After the occupants of the classroom denied seeing any such object, Roberts walked out to his truck and reappeared in the classroom holding a 9mm handgun. He ordered the male students to help him carry items into the classroom from the back of his pickup. Zook and her mother, who was visiting the schoolhouse, took this opportunity to escape the school and ran towards a nearby farm to get help. Roberts saw the people leave, and ordered one of the boys to stop them, threatening to shoot everyone if the women got away. Still, Zook and her mother managed to reach the farm, where they asked Amos Smoker to call 911.
Roberts and the young boys carried lumber, a shotgun, a stun-gun, wires, chains, nails, tools and a small bag. Also brought into the classroom was a length of wooden board with multiple sets of metal eyehooks, presumably to be used for securing the victims. The contents of the bag included a change of clothes, toilet paper, candles, sexual lubricant, and flexible plastic ties. Using wooden boards, Roberts barricaded the front door.
Hostages taken
He ordered the female children to line up against the chalkboard and allowed a pregnant woman, three parents with infants, and all remaining male students to exit the building. One female student also escaped: nine-year-old Emma Fisher (whose two older sisters remained inside). The nine-year old, who spoke only Pennsylvania German, had not understood Robert's order, "Stay here. Do not move, YOU WILL BE SHOT." and followed her brother, Peterli, out of the building, leaving ten hostages.
Police notified
The 911 call from the farm where Zook and her mother sought help was recorded at 10:36 a.m. In an article entitled Revisiting the Amish Schoolhouse Massacre, published August 22, 2007, the situation is described prior to the arrival of the first state police troopers: "An Amish adult male from this farm, with his two large dogs, took the bold opportunity to stealthily approach the windowless back wall of the schoolhouse. Hoping for an opportunity to help the little girls, he slowly crept around one side of the wooden structure and positioned himself as an observer next to a side window." The detailed accounting of the police response continues, "Observing that the first police patrol vehicle to approach the scene was not slowing down to stop, the Amish man quickly withdrew from his hiding place and sprinted towards the roadway to wave down the trooper, who did a fast U-turn and parked. That would be the last successful attempt at an unnoticed move upon the building by anyone."
Police and emergency medical personnel arrive
The first trooper arrived at approximately 10:42 a.m. Additional troopers continued to arrive within minutes immediately afterwards.
Roberts was binding the arms and legs of his hostages with plastic ties. A group of troopers approached the schoolhouse. Aware of this, Roberts warned the troopers to leave immediately, threatening to shoot the girls. The police officers backed away and formed a nearby perimeter, but did not leave the premises as requested.
The police, while waiting for reinforcements, attempted to communicate with Roberts via the PA system in their cruisers. They asked Roberts to throw out his weapons and exit the schoolhouse. Roberts refused, again ordering the officers to leave.
By 11:00 a.m. a large crowd --including police officers, emergency medical technicians, and residents of the village-- had assembled both outside the schoolhouse and at a nearby ambulance staging area. County and state police dispatchers had briefly established telephone contact with Roberts as he continued to threaten violence against the children.
During interviews conducted later it became apparent that all girls knew of their fate. Some conversed among themselves throughout the ordeal. Shortly before Roberts opened fire, two sisters, Marian and Barbie Fisher, 13 and 11, requested that they be shot first that the others might be spared. Barbie was wounded, while her older sister was killed.
A child's loud screaming was heard from within the school. A team of officers was positioned just behind a shed attached to the rear corner of the schoolhouse and they requested permission over the radio to approach the windows. The permission was denied.
The shooting
At approximately 11:07 a.m., Roberts began shooting the victims. The troopers immediately approached. As the first trooper in line reached a window, the shooting abruptly stopped. Roberts had committed suicide.
The rescue
It took the troopers about two and a half minutes to break into the school to assist those children who were not killed instantly. At about 11:10 a.m. a message was broadcast on the police radio "a mass casualty on White Oak Road, Bart Township, with multiple children shot." , and "at 11:11 a.m., police radioed dispatchers again, estimating 10 to 12 patients with head injuries. The first medical helicopter was dispatched."
Troopers assisted the surviving children, administering first aid as they carried them outside. The troopers continued to tend to the girls, helping the Emergency Medical Technicians provide first aid on the school playground. Ambulances arrived just as the wounded girls were being carried out of the schoolhouse. Helicopters landed shortly thereafter and those still living were taken away for medical treatment.
Aftermath
Three girls died at the scene and two more died early the next morning, with five more left in critical condition. All of the victims that survived the immediate attack were brought to Lancaster General Hospital, stabilized, and then transferred to hospitals with pediatric trauma care. Three of the children were admitted to Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, four to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and one to Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware, reported a state police spokesman.
One of the surviving children was initially transported to The Reading Hospital and Medical Center via helicopter, and then transported to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia after being stabilized.
Reports stated that most of the girls were shot "execution-style" in the back of the head. The ages of the victims ranged from six to thirteen.
According to the Washington Post, police and coroner accounts of the children's wounds differed dramatically; Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller said Roberts shot his victims in the head at close range, with 17 or 18 shots fired in all, including the one he used to take his own life as police stormed into the school by breaking through the window glass. However, Janice Ballenger, deputy coroner in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, told The Washington Post in an interview that she counted at least two dozen bullet wounds in one child alone before asking a colleague to continue for her.
Inside the school, Ballenger said, "there was not one desk, not one chair, in the whole schoolroom that was not splattered with either blood or glass. There were bullet holes everywhere, everywhere."
The bullet wound count discrepancies were later cleared up due to the fact that some of the girls were shot with a 12 gauge shotgun which fires multiple pellets with each pull of the trigger.
As a result of their actions in the line of duty, State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller presented the State Police Medal of Honor to ten Pennsylvania State Troopers in appreciation for their efforts to assist the victims.
Amish response with forgiveness
On the day of the shooting, a grandfather of one of the murdered Amish girls was heard warning some young relatives not to hate the killer, saying, "We must not think evil of this man." Another Amish father noted, "He had a mother and a wife and a soul and now he's standing before a just God."
Jack Meyer, a member of the Brethren community living near the Amish in Lancaster County, explained: "I don't think there's anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and not only reach out to those who have suffered a loss in that way but to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts."
A Roberts family spokesman said an Amish neighbor comforted the Roberts family hours after the shooting and extended forgiveness to them. Amish community members visited and comforted Roberts' widow, parents, and parents-in-law. One Amish man held Rober
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