11 Amish Girls Shot in School

Calling on its faith for guidance, the Amish community here coupled sorrow with forgiveness Monday after a milk-truck driver armed with a small arsenal burst into a one-room schoolhouse, killing four girls and critically wounding seven others. He killed himself as police stormed the building.

The attack was methodical, gruesome and baffling. Charles Carl Roberts IV -- a 32-year-old father of three with no criminal record -- entered the schoolhouse with a gun in his hand about 10 a.m., State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said. Roberts, who was not Amish and had no known connection to the school, ordered the 15 male students, the teacher and several aides with infants to leave. Then he set about preparing for a siege.

According to Miller, Roberts lined up 10 female students, ages 6 to 13, and a young teacher’s aide against the chalkboard. He wrapped wire and plastic ties around their ankles, binding their feet together -- or to one another. He barricaded the door with boards and piled-up desks.

Outside, the teacher and the boys raced for help, cutting through fields to the nearest farmhouse. The Amish eschew most modern technology, so none of them had a cellphone. Many homes here -- like the schoolhouse -- do not have phones, although Amish farmers often have a line running to the barn or corn crib.

At 10:36 a.m., the teacher reached a phone and dialed 911.

Inside the schoolhouse, Roberts waited. He had a shotgun, a semiautomatic pistol and a rifle, 600 rounds of ammunition, explosive powder, a stun gun, two knives, a change of clothes, and a bucket with pliers, a hacksaw and wire. At some point, Roberts called his wife on his cellphone. He spoke of a grudge from long ago, said he was getting even.

He kept the girls silent as he talked. On the other end of the line, his wife heard nothing but his voice.

State police pulled up to the pale-yellow building at 10:45 a.m., nine minutes after the call for help. They tried to contact the gunman using the public-address system on their squad cars. Roberts did not respond to them.

Instead, he called 911 and demanded they leave. If they did not back off within 10 seconds, he said, he’d start shooting.

Seconds later, gunfire erupted. Roberts shot the girls in the head -- one after another, in quick order -- with his 9-millimeter automatic, stopping once to reload. He opened fire briefly on the troopers as they approached, but did not hit them. Then he turned the gun on himself; he fell face-down on the floor, dead.

“It was all over in a matter of seconds,” Miller said.

One girl died instantly. A second passed away moments later, in a trooper’s arms. Two others were pronounced dead at the hospital. Seven were in critical condition Monday night. Miller said “it would be a miracle” if they all recovered.

“He executed those children,” Miller said.

Authorities said Roberts apparently was looking to take revenge on young girls, and found the school a convenient target -- “a location of opportunity,” as Miller put it.

Employed by Land O’Lakes Inc. dairy co-op and assigned to deliver milk for a subsidiary called Northwest Food Products, Roberts was known around the community as outgoing and personable. Co-workers told authorities that Roberts had seemed tense of late, not his usual quick-to-joke self, but had been more relaxed in the last few days.

When he finished his milk route about 3 a.m. Monday, Roberts parked the truck on a hill outside the school, as was his custom. He slept a few hours at his nearby home, but was up by 8:45 a.m. to take his children to the bus stop.

His wife, Marie, noticed nothing wrong; the day was unremarkable, routine. “His family had no inkling,” Miller said.

Marie Roberts released a statement Monday night to the media saying: “The man who did this today is not the Charlie that I’ve been married to for almost 10 years. My husband is loving, supportive, thoughtful, all the things you’d always want and more.... Our hearts are broken, our lives are shattered, and we grieve for the innocence and lives that were lost today.”

Before driving to the school in a borrowed pickup, Roberts left notes for each of his young children. His suicide letters, like his final call to his wife, alluded to resentment over a past grievance. Miller speculated that it could have something to do with a child that Roberts and his wife lost years ago. Mostly, Miller said, the notes expressed rage: “He was angry with life. Angry with God.”

But Roberts’ brutality evoked very little anger among the community Monday. Men in broad-brimmed hats and suspenders and women in bonnets and long dark dresses expressed grief and shock, but in hushed, muted tones. “It’s a sad day,” Jacob King, a 31-year-old stonemason said. He could think of nothing else to add, just repeated that one word, “sad.”

Rather than dwell on the victims -- though this is a close-knit community, where few are strangers -- Amish residents spoke of their concern for Roberts’ family; their sorrow that a man could become so unhinged, so alienated from the Lord.

“I wish someone could have helped him out, poor soul. It’s obvious that something was troubling him,” said Steve, a 54-year-old carpenter who, like many here, would not give his full name.

Of the tragedy, he would say only that it was “uncalled for,” and unexpected.

An Amish woman who gave her name as Irene also expressed compassion for the gunman. “I am very thankful,” she said, “that I was raised to believe you don’t fight back. You should forgive.”

About 20,000 Old Order Amish live among the dairy farms and cornfields in Lancaster County, about 60 miles west of Philadelphia. They shun modern conveniences such as computers and television; many do not have electricity, and some do not have indoor plumbing.

Their children usually walk the mile or two to the local schoolhouse, often a one-room building with a few dozen students from first grade through eighth. Most Amish children leave school after eighth grade to work on the family farm.

Communities do not typically have their own police force, but rely on the county sheriff or state troopers. “There’s no need for police,” said Aaron Meyer, 60, who owns a local business giving buggy rides to tourists.

Monday’s attack in many ways echoed a fatal school shooting last week in rural Bailey, Colo. In that incident, a drifter named Duane Morrison, 53, entered a high school English class, ordered the teacher and male students to leave, and kept six girls as hostages. He sexually molested some of them during a four-hour standoff. When police swarmed the classroom, Morrison fatally shot one girl, then killed himself.

Also last week, a 15-year-old boy shot and killed his principal at a school in Cazenovia, Wis. And on Monday, school police in North Las Vegas spotted a former student on campus with a gun; he fled without firing any shots.

Here in Lancaster County, violence is not completely unknown: Just this spring, a young man confessed to killing six of his relatives, ages 5 to 64. A few months later, the county was hit with a string of robberies, including the knifepoint mugging of a buggy driver.

However, the community is known as a peaceful retreat of grape arbors and orchards. Children in straw hats drive teams of horses through green valleys -- and the two-lane highway is speckled with manure. Clotheslines hang beside many of the farmhouses, pinned with whole families of dresses in dark blue and green, each a size smaller than the next.

Suburbs are creeping closer and closer, but the Amish “just go about their way,” said Myron Stoltzfus, 48, a local butcher.

Stoltzfus was raised by Amish parents; he is now a Mennonite, but understands the Amish ways and anticipates that, even as the loss sinks in, few here will call for security guards at the schoolhouse -- or even a cellphone in the teacher’s desk. “The Amish see death as a part of life,” he said. “They will grieve ... but they have more resignation. They will take this as something God ordained.”

As night fell, the wooden schoolhouse remained cordoned off with crime-scene tape. A pumpkin sat out front; in the back, the doors to two outhouses were propped open. A few orange flags marked the places where evidence had been retrieved.

But for a cluster of TV trucks, the valley was still and dark.

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ellen.barry@latimes.com

stephanie.simon@latimes.com

Barry reported from Nickel Mines and Simon from Denver.