At least six killed in Amish school shooting

Police: School killer told wife he molested family members

(CNN) -- Pennsylvania schoolhouse killer Charles Carl Roberts IV said he molested minor family members 20 years ago and was dreaming about molesting again, police said Tuesday.

Roberts' assault Monday killed five girls and wounded five others, police said, before he killed himself. Police have been trying to determine the motive behind the attack by talking to family members and analyzing suicide notes.

Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller said Roberts may have targeted the school for its girl students and -- given the various items found in the school -- intended to molest the children.

He said KY Jelly lubricant was found in the schoolhouse where the assault occurred but there is no evidence that the victims were sexually assaulted in any way.

"It's very possible, when he talks about doing the things and having dreams for the last two years about doing things that he did 20 years ago ... he perhaps planned, with the kind of wood and eyebolts and flex cuffs and KY Jelly and other things, it's very possible that he intended to victimize these children in many ways prior to executing them and killing himself," Miller said.

Roberts also said he was mad at God for the death of his premature baby, Elise, born nine years ago, Miller said.

Miller said Roberts called his wife Monday morning and said, "'I am not coming home. The police are here.'"

Then Miller said Roberts stated, "'I molested some minor family members, family members that were 3 or 4 years old, 20 years ago.'"

"Roberts mentioned in his suicide note that he was having dreams of molesting again," Miller said.

Miller said both sides of Roberts' family were interviewed, including his parents, and his wife, and they said they had no knowledge of any molestation by Roberts affecting any family member or anyone else.

Two of the girls died overnight from gunshot wounds suffered in the assault by the 32-year-old truck driver on students at the tiny farmland school in southeastern Pennsylvania. At least five other girls remain hospitalized.

Co-workers said Roberts had stopped chatting and joking in recent days.

The commercial milk truck driver lived in nearby Bart, Pennsylvania, with his wife and three children.

Roberts barricaded himself in the schoolhouse with a 9 mm pistol, a shotgun and a bolt-action rifle -- and more than 600 rounds of ammunition, police said. In another sign that Roberts was prepared for a long standoff, he also brought a roll of toilet paper, police said. He had no known criminal history, said Miller. (Watch the arsenal that Roberts brought to the school -- 2:23)

During the attack, Roberts released 15 boys and three women with infants and then told remaining female students to line up in front of the blackboard, Miller said. Roberts then tied the girls' feet together, Miller said. A teacher who was released was able to alert authorities, Miller said, and police rushed to the school.

13-year-old victim's condition upgraded
Two girls critically injured in the attack died early Tuesday, hospital and state police officials told CNN. The other three victims -- two girls and a teenager -- died soon after the attack, Miller said. (Watch what happened in schoolhouse, community's reaction -- 2:21 )

At Hershey Medical Center, a 6-year-old girl remained in critical condition Tuesday and a 13-year-old girl was upgraded from critical to serious condition, said hospital spokesman Sean Young.

Families of both girls were maintaining a vigil at their hospital bedsides and the 13-year-old was "exchanging non-verbal communication" or "eye-communication" with her family, said another spokesman, Matt Wayne.

"There is reason for optimism, but at the same time it would be conjecture to say she's out of the woods, so to speak," Young said.

Three patients -- ages 8, 10, and 12 -- remain in critical condition at Philadelphia's Children's Hospital, officials told CNN early Tuesday.

Wife: 'Not the Charlie I've been married to''
On Monday, a man who said he was a friend of the Roberts family, Dwight Lefever, read a statement attributed to the gunman's wife, Marie Roberts, according to CNN affiliate WGAL.

"The man that did this today was not the Charlie I've been married to for almost 10 years. My husband was loving, supportive, thoughtful. All the things you'd always want and more. He was an exceptional father," the statement said.

A White House spokesperson said the president was "deeply saddened and troubled by the recent school violence" and that the administration would convene a conference on the subject next week.

It was the nation's third deadly school shooting in a week, following the killing of a 16-year-old girl by a 53-year-old man in Bailey, Colorado, and the shooting death of a principal at a school in Madison, Wisconsin.

CNN.com - Police: School killer told wife he molested family members - Oct 3, 2006
 
Amish Gunman Said He Molested Children

(CBS/AP) A man who laid siege to a one-room Amish schoolhouse, killing five girls, told his wife shortly before opening fire that he had molested two young relatives decades ago and was tormented by "dreams of molesting again," authorities said Tuesday.

Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, appeared to have planned to molest the girls at the school, but police have no evidence that he actually did, State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said.

He said Roberts had sexual lubricant with him and flex-ties that he had bought seven days earlier, and that he chained the girls together in a line at the blackboard after sending the boys and adults away. Roberts also had weapons and supplies indicating he was prepared for a long stand-off, he said.

"He states in his suicide note that he had dreams about doing what he did 20 years ago again," Miller said.

Miller said police could not confirm the claim about molesting young relatives when Roberts would have been a just a child himself, and he said Roberts' family members knew nothing of molestation in his past.

Roberts left one note for his wife, one for each of his three children and a note and checklist in his truck, Miller said. The note to his wife talked about his anguish over the loss of the couple's newborn daughter, Elise, in 1997, Miller said.

"The note that he left for his wife talks about the good memories together, the tragedy with Elise, it focuses on his life being changed forever ... over the loss of Elise, his hatred toward himself, his hatred towards God as a result of that event, and he alludes to this other reason for this anger but he can't discuss it with her and it happened 20 years ago," Miller said.

When Roberts spoke with his wife by cell phone from inside the school, more than half an hour after he had walked in, he "told her he had molested two minor relatives 20 years prior and that was how she put all of that together," Miller said.

The girls were shot "execution style" shortly after police arrived, Miller said, and Roberts was dead by the time officers broke windows to get inside. It was the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week.

Miller identified the victims, two of whom died on Tuesday, as Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12; Marian Fisher, 13; Mary Liz Miller, 8; and her sister Lina Miller, 7.

Five other children remained hospitalized, four of them in critical condition.

Miller said ten families had children in the school. Seven families had children who were shot.

State police spokeswoman Linette Quinn said the two girls who died early Tuesday had suffered "very severe injuries, but the other ones are coming along very well."

There won't be any bitterness from the Amish community toward Roberts' widow and children, former Amishman Aaron Meyers said.

"I think there's compassion for his wife, for his children, and great sadness that he did what he did, that he couldn't cope with his own life," Meyers told Early Show's Harry Smith.

Roberts, the father of three, was not Amish, but his route picking up milk from Amish farms probably took him past the school, Miller said.

"I don't believe there was any sort of malice toward the Amish necessarily," Miller said on CBS News' The Early Show. "I think he sought out a target of opportunity where he had female victims that were young in age, between the ages of 6 and 13, and I think that was really the focus, a place he could get into and out of."

Although the shootings resembled an attack last week at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., where a man took several girls hostage in a school classroom and then killed one of them and himself, Monday's shooting did not appear to be a copycat crime.

"We have to keep school safety on the front burner and stop this common refrain of, 'we never thought it could happen here,'" Kenneth S. Trump, President of National School Safety and Security Services, said on The Early Show. "If it can happen in a one-classroom Amish community, it can and will happen anywhere in the country."

Amish Gunman Said He Molested Children, Tells Wife He Molested Young Relatives 20 Years Ago, Dreamed Of Doing It Again - CBS News
 
Police say shooter dreamed of molesting

QUARRYVILLE, Pa. - A man who laid siege to a one-room Amish schoolhouse, killing five girls, told his wife shortly before opening fire that he had molested young relatives decades ago and had "dreams of molesting again," authorities said Tuesday. Charles Carl Roberts IV may have planned to molest the girls at the Amish school, but police have no evidence that he actually did, State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said.

School Violence Full Coverage on Yahoo! News

i will add more story about that okay
 
Gunman said he molested girls long ago

QUARRYVILLE, Pa. - The gunman who killed five girls in an Amish schoolroom confided to his wife during the siege that he molested two relatives 20 years ago when he was boy and was tormented by dreams of doing it again, authorities said Tuesday. Investigators also said that Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, plotted his takeover of the school for at least a week and that the items he brought -- including flexible plastic ties, eyebolts and lubricating jelly -- suggest he may have been planning to sexually assault the Amish girls before police closed in.
 
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i forgot add one

Gunman said he molested girls long ago

QUARRYVILLE, Pa. - The gunman who killed five girls in an Amish schoolroom confided to his wife during the siege that he molested two relatives 20 years ago when he was boy and was tormented by dreams of doing it again, authorities said Tuesday. Investigators also said that Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, plotted his takeover of the school for at least a week and that the items he brought -- including flexible plastic ties, eyebolts and lubricating jelly -- suggest he may have been planning to sexually assault the Amish girls before police closed in.

School Violence Full Coverage on Yahoo! News
 
Police: Gunman Told Wife He Molested Family Members

State police say a fifth child has died Tuesday morning of wounds from the shootings in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

As the death toll climbs from Monday's shooting at an Amish schoolhouse, we're learning more about the gunman.

Police say the father of three, whose gunfire has now taken five lives, had a daughter who died as an infant about three years ago. State police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller says that may have been one of several factors in the shooting that apparently targeted young, female victims.

Miller says suicide notes and phone calls reveal that Charles Roberts was "angry at life" and "angry at God." And he says co-workers talked about how Roberts' mood was dark for days, and then switched "as if a weight had been lifted."

Police say Roberts told his wife he had molested young family members 20 years ago. According to the Pennsylvania State Police, Charles Roberts wrote in a suicide note that he was having dreams of molesting again.

However, police say they've interviewed Roberts' wife and parents, none of whom know of any molestation. Police also say they can't confirm that there ever was such an incident, and can't confirm a police report was ever made.

Meanwhile, Miller calls it a "horrendous" experience for the Amish residents who are "grieving together." And he says, "The trauma on this community is almost indescribable."

Miller says a teacher had to run to a farm house to call police because, in keeping with Amish custom, there wasn't a phone at the school.

And when parents refused to fly in planes, again according to Amish tradition, they had to be driven to hospitals to see their children. And some were taken to the wrong hospitals in the confusion.

As Miller puts it, "no one deserves this."

A statement from the gunman's wife calls Roberts a "loving, supportive and thoughtful" father. Marie Roberts says her family is grieving for "the innocence and lives that were lost."

Five children are still hospitalized, most in critical condition.


but we have more story update about that
 
US killer in sex abuse confession

A gunman who killed five girls in an attack on a Pennsylvania Amish school told his wife he had molested two young members of his family 20 years ago.
Charles Carl Roberts, 32, made the claim in a phone call to his wife just before he started shooting the girls.

He also made references to an incident 20 years ago in suicide notes and said he had been haunted by dreams of repeating his actions.

Police said it was possible his attack on the girls was sexually motivated.

Five girls remain in hospital - one is critical and one is in serious condition. Three are described as stable.

"He said 'I am not coming home,' and he states 'I molested some minor family members that were three and four-years-old 20 years ago'," Pennsylvania police commissioner Jeffrey Miller said of Roberts' call to his wife.

Mr Miller said there was no evidence that any of the girls at the school had been sexually abused.

However, he said Roberts had been equipped with a "restraint kit" and two tubes of lubricant gel, which he could have been planning to use in a sexual assault.

Mr Miller pointed out that all of the victims were young girls aged six to 13 and that all of the older women and males in the classroom had been made to leave.

Baby's death

Mr Miller said that all members of Roberts' family, including two who were aged between three and five-years-old 20 years ago, had been interviewed following his abuse confession, but all said they had no knowledge of any such molestation occurring.

Roberts would have been aged 11 or 12 at the time of the claimed abuse.

His wife Marie and other family members have said he was a good and loving husband and father and that prior to Monday's attack there had been no hint of what he was planning.

In both the suicide notes and the call to his wife, Roberts spoke of his trauma following the death of his infant daughter Elise nine years before.

Elise was born premature in 1997 and only survived for 20 minutes.

Roberts said that following the girl's death his life had "changed forever" and that he was angry at God and himself.

Police say Roberts had meticulously prepared for the attack, purchasing a stun gun and tools some days in advance and compiling a checklist of gear.

Investigations are under way to establish when and where Roberts got the pistol, rifle, shotgun and 600 rounds of ammunition that he had with him.

"He had a mental script that he had already gone through in his mind and plans for what he was going to do until the time that the police arrived," Mr Miller said.

Change of plan

However, police believe that when state troopers arrived at the school and surrounded it, it disrupted Roberts' plan and caused him to panic.

Stricter gun-control laws would not have prevented this gruesome act

David Zimlin
Florida, US


Your Say: Gun access easy?
The hostage crisis quickly descended into a bloodbath as Roberts began shooting the girls, whom he had tied and lined up in front of the blackboard. He then turned the gun on himself.

By the time police stormed the building, three girls and the gunman were dead.

Two more girls - a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old - died in hospital.

Sisters killed

Two of the girls killed were sisters. Another family lost one daughter and had one injured.

The injured girls are a six-year-old, two eight-year-olds, an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old.

The six-year-old remains critical and the 13-year-old is described as being in a serious condition.

US President George W Bush said that he and his wife Laura were "saddened and deeply concerned" by the shootings and two others which occurred in US schools in the past week.

"We grieve with the parents and we share the concerns of those who worry about safety in schools," Mr Bush said.

Last Wednesday a 16-year-old girl died when an armed man, who also killed himself, took six students hostage at a Colorado high school.

And on Friday, a Wisconsin high school principal was killed when he confronted an armed 15-year-old student as he entered the school.

The White House has said it plans to host a conference on gun-related violence in schools on Tuesday following the bloodshed.

BBC NEWS | Americas | US killer in sex abuse confession
 
Tight-knit Amish shaken by attacks

Two small boys wearing matching blue shirts and black trousers held up with braces play on an old toy fire engine.

They race its battered frame up and down the side of the street, ringing the bell and shouting to each other, absorbed in their game.

A few feet away stand real fire officers helping guard the police cordon that seals off the short lane to the school, where gunman Charles Roberts killed five girls.

The two brothers, Wilmer and Mahlon Fisher, aged seven and eight, seem oblivious to the death and chaos wreaked on their tiny village, but their aunt, Anna Fisher, says they know something is wrong. They lost some of their friends in the attack.

"They have been told that they have died and have gone to heaven," she says.

She says her niece told her own daughters that "a bad man came in and did bad things".

History of persecution

The Amish have been here for generations.

As a people they have known collective trauma before. They arrived in Pennsylvania in the 18th Century, fleeing a Europe that persecuted them for their strict Protestant beliefs.

Two small boys wearing matching blue shirts and black trousers held up with braces play on an old toy fire engine.

They race its battered frame up and down the side of the street, ringing the bell and shouting to each other, absorbed in their game.

A few feet away stand real fire officers helping guard the police cordon that seals off the short lane to the school, where gunman Charles Roberts killed five girls.

The two brothers, Wilmer and Mahlon Fisher, aged seven and eight, seem oblivious to the death and chaos wreaked on their tiny village, but their aunt, Anna Fisher, says they know something is wrong. They lost some of their friends in the attack.

"They have been told that they have died and have gone to heaven," she says.

She says her niece told her own daughters that "a bad man came in and did bad things".

History of persecution

The Amish have been here for generations.

As a people they have known collective trauma before. They arrived in Pennsylvania in the 18th Century, fleeing a Europe that persecuted them for their strict Protestant beliefs.

As the motives for Roberts' callous, carefully planned attack become clearer - suggesting a grief for his lost daughter that he'd never overcome - the people here turn to each other for comfort and they look to their bibles for answers.

Their faith requires non-violence and forgiveness but that surely is hard to do. One man wondered aloud: "What is God telling us?"

Meanwhile Anna Fisher says she can barely imagine the horrors the surviving children witnessed. She once worked as a teacher in an almost identical one-room schoolhouse and says the door was open to many a visitor.

She has now left the Amish community to pursue what she describes as God's calling to be a nurse.

She specialises in post-traumatic stress disorder - a training she knows will be badly needed to help this tight-knit insular community begin to heal.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Tight-knit Amish shaken by attacks
 
Excerpts from Amish killer's note

The following is the first page of a three-page suicide note which Charles Roberts wrote to his wife Marie before attacking an Amish school in Pennsylvania.
Five girls aged between six and 13 were killed in the attack, and another five were injured.

Roberts then turned the gun on himself.

In the letter he speaks of his pain following the death of his premature daughter Elise, nine years ago.

"I don't know how you put up with me all those years. I am not worthy of you, you are the perfect wife you deserve so much better.

"We had so many good memories together as well as the tragedy with Elise.

It changed my life forever 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."

BBC NEWS | Americas | Excerpts from Amish killer's note
 
Geeze that's horrible, still it didn't say what incident that happened 20 years ago ? It doesn't make any sense why he had to do this to those girls who did nothing to him...It seem so many innocent people inculding children are getting killed everyday just cause someone is angry, just makes me sick in my stomach

:shaking my head:
 
^Angel^ said:
Geeze that's horrible, still it didn't say what incident that happened 20 years ago ? It doesn't make any sense why he had to do this to those girls who did nothing to him...It seem so many innocent people inculding children are getting killed everyday just cause someone is angry, just makes me sick in my stomach

:shaking my head:
Click to expand...


That right I agree w/you and i jus hate see those ppl who killed innocent sweet children who end life
 
School killer 'molested relatives'

THE crazed killer who slaughtered five girls in a schoolhouse admitted molesting young relatives moments before killing himself, it was revealed today.

Charles Carl Roberts IV made the confession to his wife before shooting 10 children at an Amish school in Pennsylvania, US.

The father-of-three told her he had been having dreams about the attacks - and that he wanted to repeat them.

Police today indicated his confession may give a clue as to his motive.

However, they added that neither family members nor investigators knew of any past sex attacks.

Roberts' wife later said he also was very upset over the death of a daughter, who died shortly after birth in the late 1990s.

Five children are still in hospital after Monday's atrocity, the third shooting incident to hit an American school in less than a week.

Roberts wrote his wife and children suicide notes, and went to the West Nickel Mines Amish School ready for an extended siege.

He had three guns, a stun gun, two knives, a pile of wood and a bag with 600rounds of ammunition, a change of clothing, toilet paper, bolts and hardware and rolls of clear tape.

He also took sexual lubricant with him, police said today, although no evidence has been found that he sexually assaulted his victims.

He let the boys in the class go, along with adult women and the class teacher, who raised the alarm.

He shot himself as police stormed the schoolhouse.

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 this morning, authorities said.

The victims, two of whom died on Tuesday, were Naomi Rose Ebersole, seven; Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12; Marian Fisher, 13; Mary Liz Miller, eight; and her sister Lina Miller, seven.

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.

Killer was 'good father'

THE wife of the crazed gunman who slaughtered girls at an Amish school said her husband loved their children and changed nappies without complaint.

Child killer Charles Roberts’ wife Marie Roberts added that he played soccer and took his seven-year-old girl and two boys, a baby and a four-year-old, shopping.

Meanwhile Roberts’s grandmother described him as a “good son and a good father”.

His grandfather said the shooting did not make any sense.

“He was never a problem. He was a family man,” he told a newspaper.

Mrs Roberts’ uncle, Jim Brubacker, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he had never even seen the gunman get angry.

“He seemed so mild-mannered, he didn’t seem to be a person who would do this,” he said.

However, co-workers noticed that he had changed from upbeat to sullen in the weeks before the attack, police said.

The Sun Online - News: School killer 'molested relatives'
 
Amish killer had abused children as a boy

The gunman who killed five girls at an Amish school in Pennsylvania said in a suicide note that he was haunted by the fact that he had molested young children 20 years ago when he was a boy.

Charles Roberts, 32, said he dreamed of repeating such acts. In letters written to his wife on the morning of the murders, he also said that he was angry with God over the death of a prematurely-born daughter nine years ago.

Roberts entered the schoolhouse of the strict Christian community in Nickel Mines on Monday morning and let male pupils and teachers go before binding the girls by their feet and shooting them.

Five of the girls are still badly injured in hospital.

The gunman committed suicide.

Telegraph | News | Amish killer had abused children as a boy
 
That's fucking sick. :roll:

More school shootings are getting more problem.
 
Pacman said:
That's fucking sick. :roll:

More school shootings are getting more problem.
Click to expand...

i know but i will look more story about amish cases whatups going on but dont worry about that but its really sad
 
THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD MAKE A ORDER TO STOP SELLING GUNS IN THE STORES, EVEN THE GUNS ARE STILL SELLING IN THE WALMART

:pissed:
 
Gunman said he molested girls long ago

QUARRYVILLE, Pa. - The gunman who killed five girls in an Amish schoolroom confided to his wife during the siege that he molested two relatives 20 years ago when he was boy and was tormented by dreams of doing it again, authorities said Tuesday.

Investigators also said that Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, plotted his takeover of the school for nearly a week and that the items he brought — including flexible plastic ties, eyebolts and lubricating jelly — suggest he may have been planning to sexually assault the Amish girls before police closed in.

"It's very possible that he intended to victimize these children in many ways prior to executing them and killing himself," State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said. But Roberts "became disorganized when we arrived," and shot himself in the head.

Holding up a copy of the gunman's suicide note at a packed news conference, Miller also suggested that Roberts 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," the milk truck driver and father of three 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 identified the demons in Roberts' head a day after the shooting rampage shattered the sense of calm in Lancaster County's bucolic Pennsylvania Dutch Country, where the Amish live a peaceful, turn-the-other-cheek existence in an 18th-century world with no automobiles and no electrical appliances.

"He certainly was very troubled psychologically deep down and was dealing with things that nobody else knew he was dealing with," Miller said.

The death toll rose to six Tuesday — including the gunman — when two girls died of their wounds.

During the standoff, Roberts told his wife in a cell phone call from the one-room schoolhouse that he molested two female relatives when they were 3 to 5 years old, Miller said. Roberts would have been around 11 or 12 at the time. Also, in a suicide note left for his family, 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 two relatives. Family members knew nothing of molestation in his past, Miller said. Police located the two relatives and were hoping to interview them.

If Roberts felt painfully conflicted about a sexual desire for little girls, he might have blamed the children themselves and acted out his rage on them, one expert said. He might have considered them "responsible for his downfall," said criminal psychologist Eric Hickey at Alliant International University in Fresno, Calif.

Roberts had planned the attack for nearly a week, buying plastic ties from a hardware store on Sept. 26 and several other items less than an hour before entering the school, Miller said.

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 last Wednesday, the day after Roberts began buying materials for his siege.

Using a checklist that was later found in his pickup truck, Roberts brought to the school three guns, a stun gun, two knives, a pile of wood for barricading the doors, and a bag with 600 rounds of ammunition, police said. He also had a change of clothing, indicating he had planned a long siege, police said.

He sent the boys and several adults away and bound the girls together in a line at the blackboard. Miller on Tuesday revealed that one of the girls was able to escape with the boys.

A two-by-four 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 and sexually assault them, Miller said. "It's important to note that we had 10 victims at that time that were in the school," he said.

The girls left in the room were shot at close range shortly after police arrived, Miller said.

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

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 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 the funerals. An Amish woman who helped comfort family members said they were being sustained by prayer.

"It's a tragedy we've never seen before," said the woman, whose father was a church bishop. Like many Amish, she declined to give her name. "They said it was a happy school," she said. "The children were happy, the teachers were happy."

Roberts, from the nearby town of Bart, was not Amish and did not appear to have anything against the Amish, Miller said. He said Roberts was bent on killing girls and apparently figured he could succeed at the serene schoolhouse.

Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman, spoke at a community prayer service Tuesday evening and said he was at the home of Roberts' father when an Amish neighbor came to comfort the family.

"He stood there for an hour, and he held that man in his arms, and he said, 'We will forgive you,'" Lefever said. "He extended the hope of forgiveness that we all need these days."

Sam Stoltzfus, 63, an Amish woodworker who lives a few miles away from the shooting scene, said his grandchildren were full of questions when they came home from another Amish school.

"They were terrified," said Stoltzfus, whose son took the grandchildren to school Tuesday morning so they wouldn't have to walk by themselves. "They wanted to know: What was wrong with him? Why was he doing that?"

Stoltzfus 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."

Gunman said he molested girls long ago - Yahoo! News
 
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