Lorry driver opens fire in Amish school

A lorry driver carrying three guns stormed an Amish school and opened fire on a dozen girls, killing at least three people before committing suicide.

Seven other victims were critically wounded, authorities said. Some reports claimed a fourth victim had died in the shootings.

It was America’s third deadly school attack in a week, and it sent shock waves through Lancaster County’s peaceful Amish country.

Most of the victims had been shot at point-blank range after being lined up along the blackboard, their feet bound with wire and plastic ties, authorities said.

Two young students were killed, along with a female teacher’s aide who was slightly older than the students, state police commissioner Jeffrey Miller said.

“This is a horrendous, horrific incident for the Amish community. They’re solid citizens in the community. They’re good people. They don’t deserve… no one deserves this,” he said.

Miller said that a fourth girl had died at Hershey Medical Centre. However, a spokeswoman for the hospital, Amy Buehler Stranges, said that there had been no change in the condition of the three girls at that hospital.

The gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old milk lorry driver from the nearby town of Bart, was desperate on “revenge for something that happened 20 years ago” when he was a boy, Miller said.

Miller refused to expand on his statement.

Roberts was not Amish and appeared to have nothing against the Amish community, he added. Instead, Miller said, he apparently picked the school because it was close by, there were girls there, and it had little or no security.

The attack bore similarities to a deadly school shooting last week in Bailey, Colorado, and authorities there raised the possibility that the Pennsylvania attack was a copycat crime.

Miller said Roberts was apparently preparing for a long siege, arming himself with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, a 12-gauge shotgun and a rifle, along with a bag of about 600 rounds of ammunition, two cans of smokeless powder, two knives and a stun gun on his belt.

He also had rolls of tape, various tools and a change of clothes.

Roberts had left several rambling notes to his wife and three children that Miller said were “along the lines of suicide notes".

The gunman also called his wife during the siege by mobile phone to tell her he was getting his own back for some long-ago offence, according to Miller.

From the suicide notes and telephone calls, it was clear Roberts was “angry at life, he was angry at God,” Miller said.

It was clear from interviews with his colleagues at the dairy that his mood had darkened in recent days and he had stopped chatting and joking around with fellow employees and customers, the officer said.

Miller said that Roberts had been scheduled to take a random drug test yesterday, but the officer said it was not clear what role that may have played in the attack.

He added that investigators were looking into the possibility the attack may have been related to the death of one of Roberts’ own children. According to an obituary, Roberts and his wife Marie, lost a daughter shortly after she was born in 1997.

As investigators searched surrounding farmland, looking for evidence around this tiny village about 55 miles west of Philadelphia, dozens of people in traditional plain Amish clothing watched.

Reporters were kept away from the school after the shooting, and the Amish were reluctant to speak with the media, as is their custom.

The victims were members of the Old Order Amish. Lancaster County is home to some 20,000 Old Order Amish, who turn their backs on cars, electricity, computers, fashionable clothes and most other modern conveniences, live among their own people, and typically speak a German dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch.

Bob Allen, a clerk at a bookstore in the Amish country tourist town of Intercourse, said residents see the area as being safe and the Amish as peaceful people. “It just goes to show there’s no safe place. There’s really no such thing,” he said.

The shooting took place at the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School, a white building set amid green fields, with a square white fence around the playground. The school had about 25 to 30 students, ages 6 to 13.

According to investigators, Roberts walked his children to the school bus stop, then backed his lorry up to the Amish school, unloaded his weapons and walked in. He released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with babies, Miller said.

He barricaded the doors , piled-up desks and flexible plastic ties; made the remaining girls line up along a blackboard; and tied their feet together with wire ties and plastic ties, Miller said.

The teacher and another adult at the school fled to a farmhouse nearby, and someone there called emergency services to report a gunman holding students hostage.

Roberts apparently called his wife, saying he was taking revenge for an old grudge, Miller said.

Moments later, Roberts told officers he would open fire on the children if police did not back away from the building. Within seconds, gunfire was heard. They smashed the windows to get inside, and found his body.

Miller said he had no immediate evidence that the victims were sexually assaulted.

No-one answered the door at Roberts’ bungalow. A family spokesman, Dwight LeFever, read a short statement from Roberts’ wife.

“Our hearts are broken, our lives are shattered, and we grieve for the innocence and lives that were lost today,” it said. “Above all, please pray for the families who lost children and please pray too for our family and children.”

Miller said he believed the Pennsylvania attack was not a copycat of the similar Colorado crime: “I really believe this was about this individual and what was going on inside his head.”

On Friday, a school principal was shot to death in Cazenovia, Wisconsin. A 15-year-old student, described as upset over a reprimand, was charged with murder.

The Pennsylvania attack was the deadliest school shooting since a teenager went on a rampage last year on an Indian reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota, killing 10 people in all, including five students, a teacher, a security guard and himself.

Nationwide, the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado, remains the deadliest school shooting, with 15 dead, including the two teenage gunmen.