Five Killed at Pa. Amish School

As officers arrived at the school and a hostage negotiator tried to contact Roberts, he called a police dispatcher and warned that he would start shooting in 10 seconds if police did not withdraw, Miller said. Seconds later, shots rang out, and state troopers carrying ballistic shields rushed the building. Miller said Roberts had barred the doors with lumber that he had brought for that purpose and with desks from the classroom.

Roberts spoke to his wife by cellphone moments before he opened fire, Miller said. In addition to shooting at the girls, he fired out a window at approaching state troopers but did not hit them. Miller said troopers did not fire any shots. One trooper was injured slightly by broken glass while entering the classroom through a window.

Police found Roberts face down on the floor, with the weapons beside him, Miller said, adding that "one of the girls died in the arms of one of my troopers."

Television news footage showed ambulances and police vehicles on the road outside the schoolhouse, which is surrounded by a white fence. A blue pickup with a white cap over the bed was backed up to the front of the schoolhouse. At one point, firefighters and Amish men walked abreast through nearby fields, looking for students who might have fled and were not accounted for.

Three of the injured, ages 6, 7 and 13, went to the Penn State Hershey Medical Center. The 7-year-old was taken off life support overnight and died at 4:30 a.m., with her parents at her side, hospital spokeswoman Amy Buehler Stranges said.

The 6-year-old remains in critical condition, a second hospital spokeswoman said. The 13-year-old's condition was upgraded to serious, and hospital officials said she was able to communicate non-verbally -- with some eye communication -- with members of her family.

A 9-year-old girl who was flown by helicopter to Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del. died at 1 a.m. Tuesday, hospital spokesman Spiros Mantzavinos said.

Three girls -- whose ages were given by police as 8, 8 and 11 years old -- were flown to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where they were out of surgery by Tuesday morning but remained in critical condition, spokeswoman Peggy Flynn said.

Matt Wayne of the Penn State Hershey Medical Center said the hospital has offered the Amish transportation, among other services, to help them travel back and forth from the hospital.

"They have not taken us up on any requests for transportation," Wayne said, however.

The first Amish settlers arrived in Lancaster County in the early 18th century, according to the Pennsylvania Dutch Country Welcome Center's Web site. The group is named for Jacob Amman, a 17th-century Swiss bishop whose followers in the Anabaptist movement were persecuted for their belief that infant baptism was invalid.

Donald Kraybill, a leading national scholar of Amish communities, said he recalled one or two cases of arson at Amish schoolhouses but no other violence. "I think this is really an aberration," said Kraybill, a senior fellow in the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County.

Kraybill, who has written extensively about the Old Order Amish and Mennonite communities, said Lancaster County has about 150 one-room schoolhouses.

"The ethos of the classroom accents cooperative activity, obedience, respect, diligence, kindness and interest in the natural world," Kraybill wrote. "Little attention is given to independent thinking and critical analysis -- the esteemed values of public education. Despite the emphasis on order, playful pranks and giggles are commonplace."

On Monday, on a farm not far from the Georgetown school, Amish residents gathered in front of a building, the bearded men in black pants, suspenders and broad-brimmed straw hats and the women in long dresses and bonnets.

Irene Moyer, who is Amish, said she first heard about the "mass casualty" incident by word of mouth and then was contacted by the parents of one of the children at the school. "One of the Amish neighbors knocked at the door and said: 'Can you take care of my children? There's a gunman at the school.' "

A family spokesman, Dwight LeFever, read a statement from Roberts's wife, saying: "Our hearts are broken, our lives are shattered, and we grieve for the innocence and lives that were lost today. Above all, please, pray for the families who lost children and, please, pray, too, for our family and children."

The families of the victims did not make any public comment on the tragedy. But hospital officials in Hershey said the grandfather of one of the girls taken there asked them to appeal for prayers from "people of all faiths."

Staff writers Daniel de Vise, Tamara Jones, Kari Lydersen, Dan Morse, Clarence Williams and William Branigin, researcher Meg Smith and the Associated Press contributed to this report.