USA: Gunman attacks one room school house in Pennsylvania, executes 3 Amish school girls

A gunman killed three schoolgirls execution style and then shot himself dead on Monday (October 2) after bursting into an Amish school in rural Pennsylvania, where he ordered the boys to leave and lined the girls up against the blackboard, police said. Seven other girls were wounded, some seriously. It was the third U.S. school shooting in less than a week, this time in a peaceful largely Amish community, where descendants of German settlers have preserved a religious lifestyle that shuns modernities like cars and electricity. Identified as Charles Carl Roberts, the shooter had left a rambling suicide note and letter to his wife and children referring to an event 20 years ago for which he sought revenge, police said, declining to give any more details. He was armed with an automatic handgun and a shotgun and bound the girls before opening fire at the school in Lancaster County, about 60 miles (100 km) west of Philadelphia. When Pennsylvania state police arrived at the one-room schoolhouse the gunman, a 32-year-old dairy truck driver who was not Amish, warned emergency operators that he would begin shooting if police did not leave within 10 seconds. He then opened fire, and police broke in through the windows to discover "a horrendous crime scene." "One of the children died in the arms of one of our troopers," Jeffrey Miller of Pennsylvania state police told a news conference. There were similarities between the Pennsylvania tragedy and last week's school shooting in Bailey, Colorado, where a schoolgirl was killed. In both cases the gunmen made the boys and teachers leave, keeping only girls hostage and then lining them up at a blackboard. Both gunmen shot themselves and both left what appeared to be suicide letters. Roberts allowed a female teacher, a pregnant woman, some other adults and 15 boys in the class to leave, then barricaded himself in the school with the girls, blocking the doors with boards and desks. While a hostage negotiator was trying to call the man's cell phone, he opened fire and about 10 police troopers stormed the building. They found the gunman dead along with the bodies of three girls. "These victims were shot execution style, shot in the head," Miller said. "Apparently he did make a statement to his wife that he was acting out revenge ... for something that occurred 20 years ago." A local hospital said three girls, including one aged 11, were in critical condition with gunshot wounds. Another three wounded girls were expected to arrive at the hospital shortly. "It was terrible. I felt like crying. I never dreamt that I would see it in a one-room schoolhouse," said Jake King, 56, an Amish man, who lives near the school. A witness told the Lancaster New Era newspaper that the gunman pulled up in a pickup truck outside the Georgetown School and ran into the schoolroom where the Amish children were doing their lessons. The witness said he was rambling nonsensically and smoking a pipe. The teacher and some visitors ran to a nearby farm for help, while the gunman ordered the boys out of the school. It was the third school shooting in a week. On Friday a 15-year-old student killed his school's principal in western Wisconsin, and last Wednesday a drifter took six female high school students hostage, molested them and then shot one dead before killing himself as police closed in. The Pennsylvania shooting occurred in a normally placid, community where Amish farmers live simply, shunning modern machines, travelling by horse and buggy and cultivating the land using old-fashioned traditions. "In this township of about 30,000 people, we have no police. Because there's just virtually no crime. Many of these townships here have no police at all," Aaron Meyer, owner of a local buggy company, told CNN.

ITN Source | October 3, 2006

Tags:. .normally. .suicide. .statement. .religious. .letter