Community Will Destroy Amish Schoolhouse

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Associated Press
Monday, October 9, 2006

NICKEL MINES, Pa., Oct. 8 -- The one-room Amish schoolhouse where five young girls were shot to death and five more were wounded last week will be torn or burned down and rebuilt elsewhere, according to a member of the close-knit community.

Those students who survived the shooting rampage will probably receive lessons at home for the rest of the school year, according to Daniel Esh, who said he learned of the plans from a nephew who attended a meeting on the matter.

"It would just be asking too much of them to go back," said Esh, whose three grandnephews were inside the school when Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, stormed it.

Roberts released 15 boys and four adults before tying up and shooting the 10 girls. Roberts had come armed with a shotgun, a rifle, a handgun and a stun gun.

County Coroner G. Gary Kirchner said one of the survivors, whose parents took her home to die late last week, was returned to Penn State Children's Hospital in Hershey. He said her prognosis remained extremely poor.

"People want to latch onto this 'improving' business, and it is just not so," said Kirchner. "My guess is that if she's survived this long, she will continue to be in this state with a mortal head wound."

Churches throughout Lancaster County were asked to ring their bells in remembrance of the victims on Monday at 10:45 a.m., the time the siege began.