West Nickel Mines School shooting

Amish school shooting
Location	Bart Township, Pennsylvania, United States
Date	Monday, October 2, 2006
Target	West Nickel Mines School
Attack type	School shooting, mass murder, murder-suicide, massacre
Weapons	shotgun, handgun
Deaths	6 (including the perpetrator)
Perpetrators	Charles Carl Roberts IV

The Amish school shooting occurred on the morning of Monday, October 2 2006, when a gunman took hostages and eventually killed five girls (aged 7–13) and then killed himself at West Nickel Mines School, a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, a village in Bart Township of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States. Police report that the gunman was Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old milk-tank truck driver who lived nearby.

The invasion

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 caliber 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 women 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 Dutch, had not understood Robert's order and followed her brother out of the building. Roberts now held ten young females hostage within the confines of the small schoolhouse.

Police notified

The 911 call from the farm where Zook and her mother sought help was recorded at 10:36 AM. In Revisiting the Amish Schoolhouse Massacrepublished August 22, 2007 on PoliceOne.com, author Rick Armellino describes the situation prior to the arrival of police: "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 strategic observational position 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 & emergency medical personnel arrive

The first trooper arrived at approximately 10:42am. 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 11:00am 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 and second. Barbie survived the shooting, while Marian did not.

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 begins

At approximately 11:07am 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 11:10am a message was broadcast over the airwaves. Recalls Lancaster Newspaper reporter and author Janet Kelley in her article titled Horror and Heroism, "a mass casualty on White Oak Road, Bart Township, with multiple children shot." Kelley further reports another radio call quickly followed with more dreadful details, "at 11:11am, 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. 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.

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, Pa., told The Washington Post in an interview that she counted at least two dozen bullet wounds in one child alone before asking a colleague to continue for her.

Inside the school, Ballenger said, "there was not one desk, not one chair, in the whole schoolroom that was not splattered with either blood or glass. There were bullet holes everywhere, everywhere."

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.

The school was demolished on October 12, 2006 and a new school, the New Hope School, has since been built near the original site, It opened on April 2, 2007, precisely six months after the shooting. The Amish plan to leave a quiet pasture where the schoolhouse once stood.

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.

Not surprisingly, some of the Amish parents from this region remain afraid to send their children to the new school and instead prefer to educate them at home.

Possible motives

Roberts was last seen by his wife at 8:45am when they walked their children to the bus stop before leaving. When Mrs. Roberts returned home a little before 11:00 a.m., she discovered four suicide notes; one addressed to herself and one to each of their three children.

Roberts called his wife from the schoolhouse on his cell phone and told her that he had molested two young female relatives (between the ages of 3 and 5) twenty years ago and had been daydreaming about molesting again.

One note Roberts left behind indicated his despondency over a daughter who died approximately twenty minutes after birth nine years earlier. He stated that he had "been having dreams for the past couple of years about doing what he did 20 years ago and he has dreams of doing them again", according to State Police Commissioner Colonel Jeffrey B. Miller. This admission was conveyed to his wife during the brief phone call about sexually molesting two family members when he was younger.

On October 4, 2006, the two relatives whom Roberts said he molested 20 years ago told police that no such abuse had ever happened, throwing a new layer of mystery over the gunman's motive and mental state during the shooting.

Miller said there was no evidence any of the Amish children had been molested.

Roberts was a resident of nearby Georgetown, another unincorporated area of Bart Township.

Victims

Fatalities

• Naomi Rose Ebersol, aged 7, died at the scene October 2, 2006.
• Marian Stoltzfus Fisher, aged 13, died at the scene October 2, 2006.
• Anna Mae Stoltzfus, aged 12, was declared dead on arrival at Lancaster General Hospital, Lancaster, Pennsylvania October 2, 2006.

• Lena Zook Miller, aged 7, died at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania on October 3, 2006.
• Mary Liz Miller, aged 8, died at Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware on October 3, 2006.

Injured

All of the surviving Amish schoolgirls were hospitalized.

• 6 year old female (Rosanna King) was removed from life support at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and sent home at the request of her family on October 4, 2006. Some reports claim the child showed signs of recovery and was sent back to the hospital. She is now home, severely disabled and fed through a tube.
• 8 year old female (Rachel Ann Stoltzfus)

• 10 year old female (Barbara Stoltzfus "Barbie" Fisher)
• 12 year old female (Sarah Ann Stoltzfus)
• 13 year old female (Esther King)

Rachel Ann Stoltzfus, Esther King and Barbara Stoltzfus "Barbie" Fisher returned to school in the fall of 2006, although some have had to miss class time due to rehabilitation or surgeries. Sarah Ann Stoltzfus returned to school just before Christmas and despite a serious head wound, she is doing well in school. The youngest victim, Rosanna King, 6, remains in a semi-comatose state.

Amish respond with forgiveness

CNN reported a grandfather of one of the murdered Amish girls said of the killer on the day of the murder: "We must not think evil of this man."

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," he told CNN.

The Amish have reached out to Roberts' family. Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman said an Amish neighbor comforted the Roberts family hours after the shooting and extended forgiveness to them.

An article in a Canadian newspaper the National Post stated that the Amish have set up a charitable fund for the family of the shooter.

The Amish do not normally accept charity, but due to the extreme nature of the tragedy, donations were accepted. Richie Lauer, director of the Anabaptist Foundation, said the Amish community, whose religious beliefs prohibit them from having health insurance, will likely use the donations to help pay the medical costs of the hospitalized children.

The fathers of the Amish girls who had been shot went to the killer's parents and asked what they could do to help them.

911 transcripts

On October 10, 2006, the 911 transcripts were released.

Transcript of 911 calls made October 2, 2006 in connection with gunman Charles Carl Robert IV’s siege at an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pa. The callers identified in the transcript are; Amos Smoker the man who telephoned 911 reporting the armed invader at the school. Roberts and Robert's wife, Marie.

The tapes of the calls were transcribed by Lancaster County District Attorney Don Totaro. In some cases where the transcript indicates the line went dead, it is because the call was transferred to state police and was not recorded by Lancaster County, the prosecutor’s office said.

10:35:29- The school teacher, Emma Mae Zook, had just ran to a nearby farm to summon help. Amos Smoker placed the call on her behalf. About the time of this initial call for help; a pregnant woman, three parents with infants and all fifteen male students were told to leave the school by Roberts. The first police officer arrived approximately six minutes later. As the first few troopers approached the building Roberts ordered them to leave or else he would start shooting. An agitated Roberts contined to demand that Police leave as the troopers attempted to communicate with Roberts via the PA system in their cruisers .

10:41:35

10:55:38- During this time Roberts was reaching the final stages of his plan. The bound girls had been arranged at the front of the classroom, near the chalkboard. Roberts makes two cell phone calls. One to his wife and the next one to police. He warns the 911 dispatcher that if state police were not off the property in two seconds, he would kill the children. Two girls begin negotiating with Roberts. They plead for him to shoot them first. This action buys the girls a little extra time for possible rescue. At approximately 11:07am, he follows through with his threats as the sound of rapid gunfire is heard.

10:58:39- At this point Mrs. Roberts called 911 after arriving home from a prayer study group meeting. She has just discovered a suicide note left on the kitchen table and had received a brief and disturbing emotional phone call from her husband.

Other recent school shootings

This marked the third school shooting in the United States in less than a week after the Platte Canyon High School shooting on September 27, 2006 and Weston High School shooting two days later.

This was the twenty-fourth school shooting in the United States, according to the National School Safety and Security Services. The Bush administration held a conference to discuss the issue of school violence.