relatives said they had forgiven the gunman who killed them in a one-room schoolhouse.
The attack occurred Monday, October 2, in the sleepy town of Nickel Mines, where the Amish had tried to live as a Christian minority with a rural lifestyle, stressing humility and rejecting many of the trappings of modern life.
At least four girls remain hospitalized. Thursday’s funerals were reportedly scheduled for Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; Marian Fisher, 13; Mary Liz Miller, 8; and her sister Lena Miller, 7. Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, was to be buried Friday, October 6.
They were killed after Charles Carl Roberts, a local milk truck driver stormed the school Monday, October 2 and separated the girls from the boys. Police say he lined up the girls, shot 10 of them and then committed suicide.
Yet, in what was seen as a show of remarkable compassion, the Amish 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, The Associated Press news agency reported.
LOT’S OF SUPPORT
"I hope they stay around here, and they’ll have a lot of friends and a lot of support," Daniel Esh, a 57-year-old Amish artist and woodworker whose three grandnephews were inside the school during the attack, reportedly said of the Roberts family.
Police said Roberts revealed to his family in notes he left behind and in a phone call from inside the West Nickel Mines Amish School that he was tormented by memories of molesting two young relatives 20 years ago.
A deputy county coroner on Wednesday described a gruesome scene at the school, with blood on every desk, every window broken and the body of a girl slumped beneath the chalkboard, below a sign that read "Visitors Brighten People’s Days," AP reported. Roberts’ body was facedown next to the teacher’s desk.
HATRED OF GOD
But authorities also say the killer expressed self-loathing, a hatred of God and sadness over the death of a prematurely born daughter nine years ago. The gunman was not Amish. The shooting was the third in a US school in a week.
His grandparents-in-law, Lloyd and Lorraine Welk, watched as the horse-drawn carriages carried mourners through the quiet town of Georgetown, Pennsylvania, past the home of gunman Charles Carl Roberts.
Lorraine Welk sat in a chair crying, as her husband comforted her, along with other members of the extended family, reporters said. Handmade signs outside one home were seen reading: "Our thoughts and prayers to all the families," and "Private property, keep out." (With reports from the United States and BosNewsLife Research).
