Funerals held for four killed in Amish school shootings

Funerals for four of the five Amish girls killed in a classroom massacre have been held in Pennsylvania.

Hundreds of people from the Nickel Mines Amish community – boys and bearded men in wide-brimmed hats and dark suits, women and girls in long black dresses and black mourning bonnets – stood near a huge mound of earth for the brief graveside services.

The series of three funeral processions took the coffins past the home of Charles Roberts, the 32-year-old milk truck driver who on Monday attacked the girls’ one-room schoolhouse.

Benjamin Nieto, 57, watched the processions from a friend’s porch.

He said: “They were just little people. They never got a chance to do anything.”

Pennsylvania state troopers on horseback and a funeral director’s black car with flashing yellow lights cleared the way for more than 30 buggies in the funeral procession.

Black carriages carried the hand-sawn wooden coffins of seven-year-old Naomi Rose Ebersol, 13-year-old Marina Fisher, and sisters Mary Liz Miller, eight, and Lena Miller, seven. The funeral for the fifth girl, Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, is scheduled for today.

The killer’s widow was invited to one of the funerals, according to a Roberts family member, although it was not known whether she attended.

Roberts was well-known around the community because his milk pickup route took him to many Amish dairy farms.

The girls, in white dresses made by their families, were laid to rest in graves dug by hand in a small burial ground bordered by cornfields and a white rail fence.

Donors from around the world are pledging money to help the families of the five dead and the five wounded.

Though the Amish generally do not seek help from outside their community, Kevin King, executive director of Mennonite Disaster services, an agency managing the donations, quoted an Amish bishop as saying: “We are not asking for funds. In fact, it’s wrong for us to ask. But we will accept them with humility.”

A fund has also been set up for the killer’s widow and three children at the request of Amish leaders.

In the attack on West Nickel Mines Amish School, Roberts took over the schoolhouse, sent the adults and boys out and bound the 10 remaining girls at the blackboard. Investigators said he might have been planning to sexually assault the girls before police closed in. He shot the girls and killed himself.

Roberts had confided to his wife by mobile phone that he was tormented by memories of molesting two young relatives 20 years ago.

A sixth victim was reported to be in a grave condition yesterday.

County coroner Gary Kirchner said he had been contacted by a physician at Penn State Children’s Hospital in Hershey, who said doctors expected to take one girl off life support.

Daniel Esh, an Amish artist and woodworker whose three grandnephews were at the school, said there was also talk among the Amish of tearing down the schoolhouse.